POSSUM TROT II Meet Report

By Dick Neuburger, Meet Director

It looked as if it was going to be a great weekend! Saturday, December 5, 1998, was perfect for the 1998 Kansas Championships, hosted by Orienteer Kansas. The meet was held at Clinton State Park, near Lawrence, under sunny skies, with a light wind, and temperature in the high 60's...almost too warm. OK put on a great meet that served for many as a good warm-up for the Possum Trot the next day. That evening, many of us celebrated the season with a wonderful meal in an Italian restaurant in Lenexa.

But Sunday dawned bleak and dreary, not such a good day for the running of the second annual Possum Trot. The temperature had fallen to 42 F; it was windy and light rain was falling. By race time at 9:00 a.m., the light rain had turned to thundershowers. But the race (this last leg of the Grand Slam1, so named by Peter Gagarin, the winner of Possum Trot I) must go on! Twenty-four athletes lined up for the mass start of this 14.7-km race in Shawnee Mission Park. There were 28 controls; this year's format allowed the competitors to skip any 2 controls. Course setter Mike Shifman had designed many different possibilities for control skipping, and the results show just that.

The competition for Possum Trot II was fierce: only 7 minutes separated the 1st and 5th places! Magnus Wallenborg, from Sweden, finished ahead of Michael Eglinski by just 3 minutes. Jeremy McNight, recent West Point graduate, was 3 minutes behind Michael, and Rich Ruid, an eco-challenger, was just 15 seconds later. Eric Buckley, winner of the 1998 Turkey Trot (a 3 hour score-O hosted by St. Louis O Club) finished 37 seconds after Rich. Sanna Wallenborg became the first woman to finish the Possum Trot, beating Masters World Champion Sharon Crawford by almost 32 minutes.

Congratulations to Bill Bryant, the only person to complete the Grand Slam this year! Bill took the name of the race quite literally. After vandals retied the 5th control 15 feet high in a tree, he, with the help of Dick Luckerman, shinnied the tree and became the only person to punch that control. Bill figured that the course setter from a club named Possum Trot would actually place the control where only opossums could go and Bill wasn't to be denied the Grand Slam!

Thanks to the following for their support: Mike Shifman, course setter; Paul Akin, setup and results; Nick Hochman, setup and results; Jane Betros, T-shirt design and cartography; Lou Betros, field-checking and control retrieval (Lou had to use a tree-pruning tool to get the 5th control); Mark Roodhouse, refreshments, setup, and aid stations; and Mary Jones, aid station.

Plan to attend next year's Possum Trot on December 5, 1999. The race will be held in Blue and Gray Park, site of the 1997 Intercollegiates. We will again have some short courses available on Saturday, a Saturday evening social event, and the Possum Trot III starting early Sunday morning. We promise a well-designed and vetted course and good midwestern hospitality. 1 The other long distance orienteering races of the Grand Slam are the Billygoat, Blue Hills Traverse, and Hudson Highlander.