Georgia Orienteering Club

About > Our Club

Purpose

Founded in 1976, the Georgia Orienteering Club (GAOC) is a non-profit corporation operated exclusively to foster state, regional, and national amateur competition in the sport of orienteering.

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History

With over 5 decades of orienteering in Georgia, GAOC has evolved from one man's vision and extraordinary hard work in building a foundation of orienteering in Georgia, to a club committed to growing orienteering through education, public events, and variations of the sport including trail-o, bike-o, radio-o, canoe-o, extreme-o, and more.

1975

The Georgia Orienteering Club owes its humble beginnings to Bill Cheatum, who formed the Oconee Orienteering Club in 1975.

1978

On March 18-19, 1978, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) organized an orienteering event at Franklin Delano Roosevelt State Park (FDR). The map used was a USGS quad, which was cut and pasted to make it a manageable size, and then overprinted with magnetic north lines and the courses in red. DNR's intentions were good, but they were a little optimistic about the response. They printed 4000 maps!

1979

On March 24-25, 1979, DNR hosted a second event at FDR State Park, using the same maps and courses from its 1978 event. Bill Cheatum was at this event recruiting for the Oconee Orienteering Club. So were Steve and Robin Shannonhouse.

"Steve and I were excited to have a local club," Robin recalls. "We'd joined USOF (United States Orienteering Federation) in 1978 and had gotten excited by the 1978 DNR event. But the nearest event we could find to attend was in Nantahalla, North Carolina. We met a guy there who gave us a copy of the USOF membership form and we joined USOF and began pouring over the "Control Point," USOF's newsletter, to learn as much as possible about orienteering."

1980

In 1980, Bill Cheatum produced a black and white map of FDR, using the USGS map as a base, converting the scale to 1:15000, and adding point features. In the words of Robin Shannonhouse, "We had a mass field check with about 8 club members on Feb. 9th [1980] and Bill Cheatum put our efforts together for the final map. It was, in retrospect, a lousy map, but probably the real beginnings of the club as a team effort." The date on the map is 1980, and the copyright is assigned to the Oconee Orienteering Club.

By 1980, about 2/3 of the Oconee Orienteering Club were from the greater Atlanta area, so Bill Cheatum renamed the club the Georgia Orienteering Club (GAOC) and chartered with USOF.

In Oct 1980, GAOC had its first presence as a USOF club at the 1980 US Champs at Cuiver River St Park in Missouri, hosted by SLOC. Robin recalls the experience.

"Eight of us drove up in our red van and I remember making flash cards of the clue sheet symbols since we'd never used them before. I held up the flash cards in the front seat and everyone in back would try to guess what they meant. Also none of us had ever orienteering on a 5-color IOF-standard map before, so we went to that A-meet with much anxiety and awe.

We met the members of the Vulcan O's (at that time called the Vulcan Trailblazers, I think) at the SLOC practice area on Friday afternoon. We had no idea there was a club in Birmingham, but made fast friends and quickly afterward began coordinating our event schedules.

We were also amazed to see the number of people there, around 500. I doubt any of us even thought there were that many orienteers in the whole US! And we were totally bowled over seeing our first O-suits and meeting folks from overseas (and we couldn't believe how FAST they were!). We must have looked comical, staring with our jaws dropping at everything.

Bob DeFer, a SLOC member and the USOF Executive Director at the time, did a big welcome for us, the newest USOF club attending our first A-meet.

Doug Fortenberry (later GAOC president) was the only one to win an award, he took 2nd place in M21C on Orange (the current equivalent would be M Orange) and we partied all the way home in celebration!

At the time of the 1980 US Champs, SLOC was a very big and successful club and we took frantic notes of how they did each thing, hoping to emulate them as much as possible. They were a good example and some of our current practices were learned from the SLOC model. We went home and made codes for our controls, clue sheets, and began talking about making 5-color maps (we finally got one in 1985 for our first A-meet). That 1980 US Champs was also the first time the Green course was ever used and one of our GAOC members, Jim Merry, ran it."

In the early 80s, Bill Cheatum was the only mapmaker, and the only one who could design courses, so he pretty much ran the club himself for the first few years. He held several mapping and course setting clinics and basically worked up the club from no where.

At first, GAOC events only had White and Orange courses. Bill Cheatum added Red courses in the early 1980's with much fanfare, a special edition of the GAOC newsletter announced the new course would be an afternoon event after the normal White/Orange event in the morning. Everyone stayed, of course! Robin thinks the total membership of GAOC at the time was about 12 people, but the Vulcans and the Ft Benning O-Club (including Chuck Ferguson), used to come to our events, so we'd have a big turnout of about 20-30 people and a fierce competition on that Red course.

1982

Doug Fortenberry took over as President in 1982. He had been president of the Atlanta Canoe club and knew something about publicity, so he and Bill Cheatum designed a brochure designed to get the word out about GAOC. Fortenberry also publicized the club with several local running hotlines, the neighborhood newspapers, and the AJC newspaper. Within a couple of years, the club had grown from 22 members to 60 members.

1985

GAOC hosted its first A-meet/NRE in 1985 at F D Roosevelt State Park -- about 85 people came. Steve Shannonhouse was Meet Director.

2000

GAOC incorporated in Feb 2000 and received 501(c)(3) status in March 2000.

GAOC continues to grow, hosting local events on most weekends throughout the year except during the summer months, and hosting the Georgia Navigator Cup (an Orienteering USA National Ranking Event) each January.

Documents

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