Kudos to all of the festival meet directors, organizers, and volunteers!
As VP of Events I’ve had a few people ask me about the summer schedule and its logic. While there’s no formal pattern for meets, in recent memory we have generally held the traditional meets early in the year while the brush is low and the bears aren’t heading for the streams, yet. Starting in late June or July we offer special events, including the festival for the last few years, and sometimes an event like the Relay-O, Mountain-O, or Bike-O. The idea is to have a lighter load for all of the meet directors in high summer and start to move us away from wildlife encounters. Once families are headed back to school, we often have shorter sprints and Score-Os that let us use maps that are close to home, a little more urban and not so brushy, and we’re back to every Wednesday night when possible.
This year, with the festival behind us, we’ll have a special event run by Springer, likely on Wednesday, July 15th. (Rumor is that he’ll design a special course to punish meet directors for their sins.) After that we’ll start back in late July with a Bike-O, a few Score-Os, and then some sprints. And in the coming year we’re working to have some sort of event each month over the winter, be it a Ski-O (yes, planning for 2027 has begun!), a social (Control #3 was BS), or Indoor-O!