What's a geocaching TEAM?

[+ESP Boss]

I've seen references to being on a "team" of geocachers. What is that? My daughter (EatStayPlay) and I (ESP Boss) cache together and we are both owners of the EatStayPlay.com website. We want to form a "team" and let other users of our website join the team.

 

How do we go about doing that?

 

Thanks!

 

ESP Boss

[+Arrow42]

There is no official definition of what a "team" is in relation to geocaching. Some of the teams I've seen are basicly families who always cache together so they all share a single account - that might or might not be appropriate for your situation. Some people have formed regional clubs. The clubs have events, contests, etc. That sounds a little more like what your talking about.

[+briansnat]

A team is usually a family or sometimes a group of close friends who usually cache together. it's not an official designation, rather something that they choose call themselves. Say Mr Smith, his wife wife and kids always cache together. They may call themslves The Smiths, or perhaps Team Smith. Or say Bob, Ted and Jason have been friends since grade school and are nearly always caching together. They may call themselves something like Team BTJ.

 

Your proposal would be a bit odd. I'm not certain why you would want to share your account with strangers or what the purpose of such a team would be.

Edited June 15, 2009 by briansnat

[+Semper Questio]

In our case, it used to be our family. These days it is just my wife and I since the kids are all grown and the last one is about gone. MrsSQ likes to go along but has no interest in the logging part, so everything is logged under my handle. In fact, we have pretty much dropped the "Team" thing as my handle is pretty generic anyway.

[+mndvs737]

I've also seen it in our area where a group of cachers from out of town came for some vacation and caching time -- they signed all physical logs as "Team ALAFHAJAS" or something-or-other, presumably to save space in the logbooks, especially in the case of micros (sign once instead of 4 or 5 times). They then all noted in their online logs that they were part of the "TEAM HSDHAODH" or whatever -- that way if a cache owner was checking physical logs against the site, they would know why "OutOfTownCacherA", "OutOfTownCacherB", etc. did not show up in the physical log.

 

..spelling edit..

Edited June 15, 2009 by mndvs737

[+Team Veverca]

My username was bpivk (stands for my name+surname) but my GF caches with me so I had to write her down as +sabina (her name). Then I just decided that it's best to change the name to a team and that's it.

[+Harry Dolphin]

We always write our names separately when we cache together. For nanos on our upcoming trip, we might sign BCD (Bear/Circles/Dolphin), but anything else will get all three signatures.

[+ngrrfan]

We always write our names separately when we cache together. For nanos on our upcoming trip, we might sign BCD (Bear/Circles/Dolphin), but anything else will get all three signatures.

I cache with two others. One of these people regularly logs her finds here. The other is just interested in finding the caches and having fun. So when the logging person logs her finds she includes the other person in her log entry, so it looks something like this "XXX and I found this cache....".

 

Now that the three of us go out together, their log entries remain the same and I log my find and then update the log online too. So if you look at the online cache log you will see two entries for the cache, each entry acknowledging that there were 3 of us in the group.

 

Are we a "team"? In one sense of the word yes, but we don't call ourselves a team. We are 3 people that enjoy being together and having fun hiking and finding caches.

 

Also I think it depends on how you find the cache. To me if one person of a "team" finds the cache, and the rest of the team members immediately quit searching then that is a team effort. In our case if one of us discovers the cache, it is left untouched until all 3 of us have actually found it individually. The only exception that we have to this "rule" is if we have spent more than 30 minutes looking and feel that we've exhausted all possibilities. Then the finder will reveal the find if and when it is located.

 

Another take on "team caching" is one of competition. Say a group of 20 people get together, divide up into groups of 4, and decide to see which group can log the most finds in a certain time period. That's a team effort.