You need a map to find cross country’s season-opening meet

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A group of runners from Service High race to finish before time runs out, and the penalties start, during an orienteering meet Wednesday, August 9, 2017 at Kincaid Park. Anchorage high school cross country teams used the event as a practice day, ahead of their first meet this weekend. (Loren Holmes / Alaska Dispatch News)

Here’s one way to kick off the high school cross-country season: send runners into the woods and tell them not to get lost — or else.

The "or else" happened with frequency Wednesday at Kincaid Park, where seven schools ushered in the season with an orienteering meet.

Runners were given topographical maps showing the location of 24 markers, or controls, scattered throughout the 1,500-acre park. Each control was assigned a point value ranging from 10 to 60, depending on how difficult it was to find, and runners were tasked with finding as many controls as possible in a one-hour span.

And woe to the team that didn't meet the time limit. Every minute beyond it meant a 10-point deduction.

So it was that the Colony High team of freshmen Garrett Streit, Rett Gallagher, Glenn Steer and Jacob Wojtacha were among 35 groups of runners who lost points for exceeding the time limit and one of six who finished with no points.

"We took a wrong turn and went in a circle," explained Gallagher.

"We went in a circle multiple times," amended Steer.

The clock kept ticking as the boys kept circling, and by the time they reached the finish line at the Jodhpur parking lot, they were 18 minutes beyond the time limit. The 100 points they collected — a respectable number — became a zero in the official results.

The meet — called the High School-O — is the unofficial opening of the Anchorage cross-country season, a low-key event that's more about having fun and working as a team than it is about running personal-bests.

The orienteering club has hosted the meet for more than a decade with a clear goal in mind, said Karen Bronga of the Arctic Orienteering Club

"We're all aging," she said of the club's core group of volunteers, "and the benefit is new orienteers. We get kids coming back from college who did the High School-O and they remember it and come back."

The event is valuable for the high schools too. Each school divides runners into small teams consisting of a handful of kids. Those smaller teams work together to figure out which controls to pursue and how to get to them, turning the race into a team-building exercise.

"You bond more," said East High junior Josiah Gilila, "and it's fun."

Gilila was the designated Captain Cook of his team — he's good with maps, so he was the navigator. He and his teammates finished with 340 points after a 10-point penalty for missing the time limit by a minute.

East High topped the team standings. The T-birds fielded six groups of runners who posted an average score of 271 to beat Service, which had an average score of 224 from 12 groups of runners.

The highest high school score came from the Grace Christian group of Kevin Leach, Cole Fritzel and Erik Jones, who scored 470 points.

A total of 840 points were up for grabs, but collecting all of them in one hour was all but impossible.

The meet was open to anyone, and Gary Snyder, one of the orienteering club's top competitors, finished with the day's highest score — 560 after losing 10 points for missing the cutoff time by a minute.

"I can't remember the last time I was late," Snyder said. "It took me 13 minutes to get one of them, and that was a quarter of my time."

The race was longer and tougher than anything high school runners will encounter during the regular season.

Some of the highest-value controls were placed in spots that required scrambling and bush-whacking to reach. One of the 60-point controls was placed off-trail near a junked car overgrown with weeds.

"There was Devil's Club everywhere," said Fallon Gleason, an East High sophomore.

Tom Bronga of the orienteering club estimated it would take 12 kilometers of running or hiking — about 7.5 miles — to find all 24 controls. A typical high school cross-country race is 5 kilometers, or 3.1 miles.

"It was the best practice ever," said Steer, who estimated he and his teammates covered 4.5 miles. "I've never worked harder."

Among those waiting at the finish line was Steer's dad, Zack, a five-time Iditarod finisher whose his wife, Anjanette, also completed the 1,000-mile race.

As he listened to his son tell tales of getting lost, Zack Steer grinned.

"His mom and dad both did the Iditarod and never got lost between Anchorage and Nome," he said. "Now we're worried it might skip a generation."

Team scores — 1) East 271, 2) Service 224, 3) Grace 210, 4) West 197,  5) Colony 169,  6) Dimond 162,  7) South 94.