Our 4th Geelong Street-O summer series got off to a solid start on Thursday 8/11 at West Park. 48 participants enjoyed a coolish evening with a freshening breeze. Fortunately the light rain held off until after the event.  With some of our regular co-ordinators indisposed with ill-health and others overseas, we were a little short-handed but with regular participants chipping in to help, everything went well. Particluar thanks to Helen Schofield for placing out controls. 

Regular A graders, Ron Thomas, Tony McRae, Greer Sansom and Toby Cooper had string runs, with Ron being on home turf leading the pack.

Sofie van Gunsteren continued her leading form from the recent winter series, accompanied by newcomer Megan Pobjoy. Alf Bluch - on the comeback from injury was next home.

A strong field of 13 set off in C grade. Making a big statement, Jachob Dynes was well in front of the rest. He was followed in by Jake Cameron and Alex and Laura Wilkinson. Tania Elderkin, Glen Start and John Sheahan enjoyed the challenge of D grade.

The walking threw up interesting results. Jennie and Tim Webb, Linden and John Young finshed on 51 points with the former just ahead on time. These 4 were closely followed by Melissa Rutherford on 50 points. 

As I went through the scoring I realised that a couple of our regular participants must have had a signficant life experience in the off-season: Laura Dunn now participates as Laura Wilkinson. Are congratulations in order Alex ?? 3 other participants stood out as exemplifying what we are all about. Gerard Thomas, Tina Gordon and Georgi Allan missed their required number of controls by one. Were they disappointed or upset by this news ?? - not at all - they'd all enjoyed a good run in the streets of Geelong West and were feeling all the better for doing it. Participation is the key. 

So we're off and running with Coolabah Park, Grovedale the start point for this coming Thursday. Melissa has done well in preparing her first course. We have a large group of scouts coming along so may need to ask for some help from you experienced participants in helping get their cards filled out and briefed on how to go about Street-O. Keep in mind the Ocean Grove on Thursday 22/11 - plan a swim after our event !!  Results will be on the website.   

Alan Cooke