We’ve had a busy few OSL days with the annual Orienteering Camp this past weekend and the Orienteering Schools League Final on Monday afternoon at the lovely Kloofendal Nature Reserve.
Orienteering Camp
The annual camp is the brain-child of Garry Morrison, President of the South African Orienteering Federation. This is the third year that we’ve hosted the camp and it just keeps getting better. As Garry was away, I took the role of ‘responsible adult’ and together with three other coaches and four helpers we had a superb weekend with the 17 junior girls and 15 junior boys from a half-dozen schools. Behind the scenes Karen Chambers handled a ton of admin in sending out the invitations, collecting forms and indemnities and interacting with parents and schools. Val Brentano sorted out bookings and the weekend’s arrangements, transport to and from Randpark and the printing of maps for the weekend.
The host venue, Bushtrails, has long been one of our orienteering venues and being out in the bush, near Hekpoort, is a treat for city dwellers. We’re well looked after by Bushtrails’ Liz, Billy and Burt. On Friday night Sarah Pope (one of our coaches) spoke about the sport of orienteering, competitive events and Junior World Orienteering Champs and other international events. We gave O Sudoku a bash and Sarah ran an O quiz.
Saturday morning kicked off with a hearty breakfast, a warm-up and then the first of four coaching sessions. The children were placed into three groups which rotated between the coaches for various skills sessions. Sarah took care of the map orientation section, Zoe Brentano and Nico van Hoepen focused on map symbols and map familiarity skills and I ran the pacing and attack-point activities. For the fourth session the participants eagerly took on my new ‘Consolidation’ activity, which I hoped would consolidate the skills learned during the day before the Star Relay.
Things always go wonky on the Star Relay (participants putting their items in the wrong place, other teams moving them, lost runners, too long) – only one team completed the course before we had to head in for dinner. We’ll work on revising the course for next year.
The cones and controls for all activities were set up and packed away by our four helpers: Christie Courtnage, KG Maesela, Peter Carides and Kyle Blues. They’re all participants in this year’s League and they’ve been to the Camp before. They also regularly attend club orienteering events.
And then on Sunday morning we went to a club orienteering event at Protea Ridge, a lovely highveld area in Krugersdorp on the southern side of the Walter Sisulu Botanical Gardens (not part of the Gardens). Admittedly, the first few controls were tricky. And this is generally where these young orienteers went wrong. But once they were past Control 4 (6 and 7 proved a challenge for some), they flew all the way to the finish. Some bloopses and some good results. As with anything, practice makes perfect and being at a club event was a new experience for most. The area is more challenging than a school or park, the map is more difficult to understand and it is quite distracting to see so many other orienteers on different courses running all over the place!
I do hope to see more OSL participants at club events. We’ve been handing out FREE ENTRY vouchers at the events for the next couple of weekend orienteering events coming up in March and April.
I’d like to add how completely impressed I was with all of the children who attended the camp. I don’t often interact with teens and certainly not a group of 32 of them. We asked them to leave their cell phones in their rooms during the coaching sessions – we’ve had lost and broken phones before. They complied. Not one phone rang and I did not see a single participant texting either. We did give the participants a good dose of free time to play on ‘The Swing’, to swim and to socialise. As Liz, the owner of Bushtrails, so rightly says, teens get little time to just socialise as they’re always busy with school and activities and homework. And when we called for them, they came – promptly too. On Friday night they were all running around and talking well after midnight but after too little sleep and a full day spent outdoors they were all in bed by 21h30 on Saturday night. So was I! I certainly didn’t see any fighting nor bad behaviour and I’d gladly spend another weekend with all of them again.
The FINAL @ Kloofendal
The Top 20 orienteers in each age category (selected from the log of results from best two of three OSL event results) were invited to participate in the OSL FINAL. A couple of substitutions were included too. I didn’t quite expect as many participants to be as all over the place as they were. This terrain is quite technical and the map difficulty was more than what they’re used to; but, most of the controls were on the path (or at a junction) or not very far off a path. Provided the maps are orientated correctly and thumbs are on the map at all times to mark where you are AND you’re counting off the paths, it’s not too tricky. A bit overwhelming perhaps? Nonetheless, the top runners did shine and this course, planned by Nicholas Mulder (SAOF High Performance Manager and Junior Squad coach), was a good challenge.
Results in the Junior Girls, Senior Girls and Senior Boys have been fairly consistent with the same names popping up in the Top 5 places at every event. The Junior Boys is where the action has been with the placings changing with every event. The following runners received medals for their results at this Final.
Junior boys (20 runners)
- Franco Hay, Helpmekaar, 19:45
- Divan Koen, Helpmekaar, 22:27
- Gareth MacBeth, Charter, 24:18
Junior girls (24 runners)
- Kirsten Chambers, Bryandale, 20:41
- Kirstyn Hutcheson, Fourways, 22:29
- Surprise Kheswa, Fourways, 23:28
Senior boys (21 runners)
- Timothy Chambers, Fourways, 22:26
- Kyle Blues, Fourways, 28:05
- Richan van Staden, Helpmekaar, 29:06
Senior girls (19 runners)
- Christie Courtnage, Trinity,15:09
- Cian Oldknow, Fourways, 18:51
- Jessie Oldknow, Fourways, 24:57
As the Summit College event was rained out last week, the League log results were taken as the best two results from the three League events. Small trophies were awarded to the Top 3 in each age category with the age category winners (including Kloofendal results) receiving a floating trophy.
Log Results
Junior boys
- Henlo v/d Westhuizen, Helpmekaar, 2000pts
- Jaya Curtis, St Davids, 1998pts
- Luke Coventry, Randpark, 1822pts
Junior girls
- Kirsten Chambers, Bryandale, 2000pts
- Jureya Dildar, Fourways, 1905pts
- Kirstyn Hutcheson, Fourways, 1823pts
- Timothy Chambers, Fourways, 2000pts
- Peter Carides, St Davids, 1598pts
- Dylan Eksteen, Fourways, 1552pts
- Christie Courtnage, Trinity, 2000pts
- Cian Oldknow, Fourways, 1948pts
- Kelly Hutcheson, Fourways, 1480pts
Kirsten Chambers (Junior Girls), Henlo vd Westhuizen (Junior Boys), Christie Courtnage (Senior Girls) and Timothy Chambers (Senior Boys)
- Fourways
- St Davids
- Helpmekaar
– Download Kloofendal results (PDF, 60kb).
Photos from Kloofendal – and the other five (including the training event at Charter College) OSL events are on our Facebook page (/OSchoolsLeague).
I hope to see you (students, parents and teachers!) at other orienteering events throughout the year. Check the2013 Orienteering Event Calendar for dates and venues. Event sheets are only published a week or two before each event with specifics. Registration is usually from 08h00 or 08h30 until 09h30 with starts from around 08h30. I’m at some of the events, as are other faces you’ll recognise – as well as many other friendly people who will be delighted to assist you.
Till then,
Lisa de Speville
Expansion Plan: Project Manager
South African Orienteering Federation
www.orienteering.co.za
