Orienteering Association of NSW

Alex Davey and Jonathan Holland were the major winners in the Waggaroos Street O event on Sunday, when participants had the choice of 45- or 30-minute score courses around the suburb of Tatton.

On the longer course Alex Davey's anti-clockwise route paid off as he picked up answers to 16 of the 17 questions and scored 185 points. John Oliver went clockwise, staying high initially and slowly dropping down to Plumpton Rd. This left a long slow climb at the very end and only sufficient time to bag 170 points.

It was equally close on the 30-minute course. Jonathan Holland pushed daughter Rachel around in the pram and scored a very good 120 points. Catherine Holland scored 115 points and won handicap honours for the day.

On Sunday 30 June Waggaroos travel south to Gerogery for round 4 of the Interclub series against Albury-Wodonga.

Thanks to John Oliver for this report. 

The Stinger of the month for April is.... Matthew Parton
Matt had a great set of results over the Easter three days against some tough competition, placing 7th in the M21E class overall, his best placing 6th on the last day.  A well known and successful junior orienteer he represented Australia at JWOC in 2006 with a 6th place in the Sprint.  As well as a Stinger he is also an active mentor for younger orienteers helping out at the Junior Development Squad’s camp in the ACT in the Easter School Holidays. 

The Stinger of the month for May is...David Meyer
Dave comes from a stable of great runners with brothers Glenn and Ian both current Stingers who with sister Shannon have all winners of Australian Championships as juniors. All the brothers are members of SHOO with father Peter past President of SHOO and current secretary of the Association.

A junior who showed enormous promise, being named on the Australian Schools Championships Honour team a record 5 times, and representing Australia twice at JWOC,  Dave has matured into a impressive elite but has failed to date to show that killer instinct to perform at the highest levels internationally.    All that is about to change.  Dave has set his sights on representing Australia at the WOC in 2014 and it would be a fool who bet against his chances. His campaign has started well with success at the Easter Carnival, finishing only two minutes behind Christopher Naunton, winner on Day One.   He followed this up with some solid performances at the WOC trials in the ACT coming 4th in both the Long and the Sprint Distance.   Dave is our Stinger of the month for May.

We wish both our talented winners here the best of luck with their training and racing this year.  They each win an Endura pack – nutrition for elite athletes to help them train harder, race faster and recover quicker.

The inaugural South Coast schools orienteering gala day resulted in many happy, excited students discovering the joys of our sport. Development Officer Lyn Malmgron, Kev Curby and the IKO crew impressed the teachers with the introductory coaching and then the courses set around the Croom Regional Sporting Complex at Albion Park late last month. A total of 74 students took part and this week's Illawarra Mercury report and photo gallery shows our sport in a great light. We now have 8 of the 10 NSW school sporting regions hosting schools champs or gala days. Congratulations to everyone involved as we showcase orienteering to new audiences.

A true sprint, a genuine long distance event and a great middle distance: that sums up a terrific QBIII carnival at the Southern Highlands over the long weekend. Almost 350 participants from five states enjoyed lovely weather and interesting courses. As well as being a State League triple header, they were also excellent practice for the elites off to JWOC and WOC very soon.

Salme Fuller is one of ONSW's hard-working coaches delivering orienteering to primary students as part of the Australian Sports Commission's Active After-Schools Communities program in the Illawarra region. Salme's 7-week programs are very popular with the students and she is often asked to come back to sites for repeat visits. In recognition of her outstanding efforts over the past four years of the AASC program, Salme has received the highest commendation - a 5-star coaching award. Read about Salme's award in the Illawarra Mercury here.

Whilst runners at the NOSH were battling the elements, further south the weather was better for MTBO enthusiasts tackling the Super Series #2 & #3 at Belanglo and Penrose State Forests.  Graeme Oddy did a great job in his debut as an MTBO course setter for both days and will have learnt much from the very different forests and event conditions experienced over the weekend.  Saturday weather was perfect for racing, and everything went much as planned.  By Saturday evening that had all changed and with some significant rainfall overnight the organisers were concerned that the event might have to be postponed.  However, there was enough clear weather for the forest to dry out enough to race and with some last minute changes to the start and length of the courses the MTBO competitors were off.  Winners over the combined events were:

Course W3 Carolyn Mathews

Course M1 Eric Charpentier

Course M2 Darius Cartwright

Course M3 Wayne Bajenoff

Course M4 Graham Fowler

Full results and event report available here

Over 300 runners competed in the 39th NOSH run around Middle Harbour on Sunday.  Battling torrential rain and streams in flood, the intrepid runners weaved their 15.4km way around trails, roads and bridges from Linfield Oval to Seaforth Oval.  Despite the rain, there were some quick times, with Matty Abel winning the  18-39yr group in 68.09 mins. clocking a speed of 4.18 mins.km.  Geoffrey Berkly was not far behind coming in 2nd overall, and 1st in the 40-49 yr age group in 70.53mins.  Phoebe Savage was the first women home in 82.14mins, with Barbara Hill in 2nd overall and winning the 40-49 in 84.12mins.  Provisional results are available here.  Pictures from the event, taken with a very wet camera, can be found here.

The WaggaRoos orienteering event scheduled for tomorrow Sunday June 2 has been cancelled.

The owner of the property has expressed concern about potential damage to the farm tracks given the rain received over the past two days and forecast for the rest of the weekend.  

Waggaroos are looking at the possibility of rescheduling the event for Sunday July 7. John Oliver will advise on this in due course

...and the sun came out to show us north. There were over 100 enthusiastic faces waiting to orienteer at the Sydney West Orienteering Championships.  Ted Mulherin (WH) had set up dozens of variations of courses so that each competitor could experience all sorts of features, including termite mounds.  The fantastic volunteers from ONSW warmed the children up with a model map walk which was followed by individual age races.

Glenmore Park HS's 16+Boys were there to win - again.  After winning their age races and the Senior Boys Relays, they declared themselves ready for the NSW Schools Champs in August.  Kingswood HS was on their heels, taking out all the other secondary honours. Their training at Glenbrook with Lyn Malmgron certainly paid off.   Kurrajong PS and Kellyville Ridge PS excitedly took back to school orienteering sample bags as well as place certificates.

Thanks to Lyn Malmgron for this report

At Cattai National Park on Sunday, competitors in Metro League 3 were often reduced to a walk in the light green as they confronted vegetation that had grown substantially since our last visit there. The good hosts at WHO had warned us about this and, while winning times were pretty much spot on, most runners spent longer on the course than they would have anticipated.

After the ‘sprint’ nature of Round 2 at Callan Park, we were well and truly back in bush territory. Overgrown tracks and thicker pockets of bush demanded concentration, but such was the nature of the map and the wonderful courses set by Adrian White that if you navigated carefully then you were never really more than 100-200m from the target at any time.  Read more here

Thanks to Ian Jessup for this report

Graeme Dawson, Planner and Ron Junghans, Controller for Garingal set some near perfect classic courses at Baal Bone Junction for State League 5.  Technical rock control sites matched with long legs through the runnable forest showed the best of the map to most of the runners.  One of the ways he achieved this was by starting the courses at the top of the main ridge, making everyone nice and warm when they started after 110m climb in 550m distance!

Near perfect weather conditions for running continued from the Saturday State League 4, with the day clear and cool with bright blue skies. 

Good visibility was key in this complex rock terrain but clear mapping by Alex Tarr meant that careful navigation was rewarded.  There were spectacular views to be had for all courses; one view for the longer courses was the encroaching open cut coal mine to the west which is gradually diminishing the map area.

Next State League races are in the Southern Highlands, with the three day Queen's Birthday weekend bringing State League 6,7 and 8.  Entries are open now

State League 4 was set on classic kangaroo country and the forest was hopping with them.  Although planner Andrew Lumsden had left parts of the forest unvisited by orienteers to give the roos somewhere to retreat, it seemed that they were quite happy mixing it up with the best of NSW bush orienteers at Falnash.  One animal flushed from the forest came through the assembly area and into the string course, causing an orienteer to duck as she sat on her camping chair.  He didn't stop for his string course lollies, though, disappearing into the distance at high speed.

High speed was the order of the day, with many of the young guns enjoying the fast terrain and bringing in plenty of sub 7 minute/km speeds.  Lachlan Dow running in M21A took first place in 36.17mins, clocking an overall speed of 5.51mins/km and disappointing Greg Barbour and Jock Davis into 2nd and 3rd place who with their sub 7 minute/km times must have felt like they had a real chance of winning before they saw the results sheets.  Good to see Michele Dawson back on form, who has been having a quiet season until now, trying to overcome injury to get race fit for the JWOC in June.  Scott Charlton, NSW Carbine, was back too proving that a successful season of sailing doesn't stop you from keeping orienteering fit over the summer.

The first of our Sydney schools champs (Sydney West) is on Wed May 29 at Fred Caterson Reserve, Castle Hill. Anyone who can assist on the day (coaching, marshalling, starting etc) is asked to get in with Ian Jessup at marketing@onsw.asn.au It's best if you can be there by 9am or soon after. Thanks again to our mighty legion of volunteers who help promote our sport!

Event #2 of the Cunning Running Series for 2013, at Kings Langley on Saturday 11 May drew 37 entries with over 46 participants.  Glenn Horrocks showed new and experienced a clean pair of heels to take maximum points and his series score to 200. James McQuillan and Mark Mueller are the only two to match perfect scores with him in either race this series, and with 3 events still to go they both have a chance of catching him (4 events to count).  Currently No2 in the points score is Ian Miller with 132pts.

This year there is also a team event for the club which accumulates the most points over the series. Host team Western and Hills team is going to have to watch the performance of a very strong Garingal contingent if they want to win the new title.

The results for both events can be seen on the Western and Hills website:  http://westernhills.nsw.orienteering.asn.au/

Next event: 15 June Mark Leece Reserve, Endeavour Avenue, St Clair, Penrith.  Starts from 2.30-3.30pm

Barbara Hill of Garingal and a team of local coaches took time out from the busy winter orienteering schedule to run a training session for juniors and their families at South Turramurra on Sunday 12 May. 

Reliable orienteering by Briohny Seaman and Alex Davey guided the WaggaRoos to a solid victory over Albury in the second of the Interclub Challenge events last Sunday.

Conducted on a small area near Ettamogah the terrain generally had good visibility but long grass made the going difficult. Courses consisted of little loops and included a lynch control in which participants had to find the same feature but approach it from a different direction.

Forty one students participated in the 2013 Riverina Schools Orienteering Championships conducted by Wagga Roos and The Riverina School Sports Association at Willans Hill on Tuesday 7 May. 

Star of the day was Uranquinty Public School student Lachlan Billett.

OA High Performance Operations Manager and NSW Head Coach Nick Dent showed the rest of the field how it was done this weekend at the ACT Championships in Canberra.  There were no gaps in his game with comfortable wins in the Sprint, the Middle Distance and the Long Distance.  His main competition in his age category came from fellow runners from NSW with the State also posting 2nd, 3rd and 4th in the Sprint, 2nd, 4th and 5th in the Middle and 2nd, 3rd and 5th in the Long. 

Nick and the men in M60A weren't the only ones with great results for NSW. Scott Simson (M40A) took home a 1st in the Sprint, as did Daniel Hill (M16A), Barbara Hill (W45A), Gayle Quantock (W50A), Robyn Pallas (W60A), Jean Baldwin (W70A), Maureen Ogilvie (W80A),Eoin Rothery (M21A), Teena Leonard (WOpenB), and Lachlan Coady (M/W10 Novice).  There was similar success in the Middle and the Long as the NSW team showed their versatility across all the disciplines on what was a heavy race card weekend. 

Robbie Preston will have been delighted with his Middle Distance win in M21E as these races, as well as being NOL Round 3, were also selection races for the World Championship team who will head to Finland later this year.  The team decisions are still waiting on race results of trials for Australian runners  in Europe, who include Julian Dent of NSW. If he is running half as well as his father in his age category, we shall look for great things from him this year.

State League 3 at Wattle Ridge at the weekend was favoured with glorious weather of cool temperatures and bright sunshine.  Most competitors had taken advantage of the proximity to Sydney to travel on the day, with some of the Summer Series competitors try their first bush event.  The NSW Junior Squad was out in force, with their friends from ACT who had been training with them in Canberra during the vacation.  The event was perfectly placed for the juniors to develop their bush skills in what is known to be a challenging area of complex rock and sometimes thick vegetation.  The event saw an innovative approach to the longest Hard courses, with multiple butterfly loops keeping the sense of urgency maintained throughout the race.  

Many of the courses proved more than the challenge expected, however, with Long courses becoming somewhat Ultra Long due to some course length estimation errors and vegetation thicker than expected.  Finish times in all classes blew out so that even course winners were coming back in around the 100 minute mark, with a significant number of runners well over that.  Not all had problems however - Peter De Lissa, bush newby from the Summer Series, had a great run in the Moderate class tackling his first proper bush event in a little over 48 minutes to come second to Daniel Smith.

ASADA Anti-doping online courses -  modification to requirements. Following the Lance Armstrong  revelations last year and the various drugs in sport in Australia revelations  this year, the ASC and ASADA mandated that elite athletes in all sports should  complete online education courses on the ASADA website http://www.asada.gov.au. It is also a funding agreement requirement of OA by the ASC. An update on who must do  these courses, and who else it is strongly recommended do the courses, is as  follows. 1) Due to IT problems with the ASADA website  the due date for completion of online courses is now May 10th.       If you  are having IT related problems or with logging on etc please forward your  queries to the ASADA Education Officer, Chris Butler - chris.butler@asada.gov.au 2) While  it is desirable for all NOL and National Series participants to be  educated through the online courses it is now only mandatory for: a)  all Australian elite team members - WOC, JWOC, World Games, World Cup,  Bushrangers, Australian University team; Oceania W/M20 and elite teams, plus  b) all National squad members - elite, junior, MTBO or their  equivalents. c) all national team coaches and managers. The intent is to  have all regular participants in NOL / NS races at elite or M/W20 level complete  the courses, especially as anyone who participates in these races can potentially be subject to drug testing. However, we do not wish to discourage participants who are older  or relatively inexperienced from being able to race the occasional NOL / NS  event. As an encouragement, there will be several Silva prizes awarded by random draw to NOL  / NS participants who do complete the courses but are NOT required to do  so. This report by Blair Trewin, President of Orienteering Australia originally appeared on the website of Orienteering Australia