The Gauteng Orienteering Clubs (GOC) Short Course series is now three events down following the Valentine’s Day event at Brescia House School (14 February 2010). Although rain threatened, the event was well attended by adults, juniors and Young Orienteers Challenge (YOC) children.
RACO’s Tania Wimberley keeps track of the number of participants and, especially, the YOC participants. As Brescia was the third event of the Short Course Series, a number of children were awarded their participation badge and certificate, which are handed out after completion of three events.
According to her figures 458 people in total have taken part in the three Short Course events this year (this is 346 cards). Each of these events has been affected by rain – or the threat thereof, which is likely to have affected numbers. Nonetheless, numbers of participants are only 2% (nine people) down on the 2009 Short-Course season.
On the YOC side, 79 children have taken part in the YOC participation challenge and 13 participation certificates were awarded to children at the Brescia House event for the completion of three events. Six of these were awarded to children new to YOC this year (this compares to 12 certificates awarded at the same point in 2009, but there were only three children new to orienteering). 16 children are currently short of one event to earn their participation badges.
It is interesting to note that 30 of the 59 children participating at the popular Jo’burg Zoo event, have returned to other events. This is in line with return ratio from 2009 and therefore based on history from last year the other 29 are unlikely to do a second event. Statistics from 2009 show that 26% of the total number of children joining the Short Course YOC challenge completed it and got their badges. We hope to improve on this.
“The more children we can get to their first event, the more chance we have of increasing the number of children successfully completing the YOC challenge,” says Wimberley.
Photo from RACO – www.racorienteers.co.za