News

Summer Adventures

After the Hawth event, we take a break for the Summer season and are back to it in September.

Many of our members will be heading off to different parts of the country to take part in multi-day Orienteering events, including Lake District, Yorkshire and Sweden, amongst others I'm sure.

In addition some of our juniors have been selected for tours and events in Stockholm and Gothenburg ... more on this in the next news article ...

Read more for information about each of these events.

Summer Season price reduction on Park O’s and Free Trial for newcomers

We have just reduced our prices for the Park O series of events to encourage more participation. Adult members £2.50 (£3.50 for non-members). Junior members free (£1 for non-members). Why not invite some friends along who haven’t tried it before for a FREE trial. Either come along on the day or contact our secretary to guarantee a map. Park-O’s are fun events where you can get a feeling for the sport – you can walk or run, go as a group or on your own or challenge your navigation at high speed against some of our top competitive orienteers.

Great day out for SO juniors at the YBT final- Irchester Country Park

Very well done to all our juniors who took part in the YBT final in Northamptonshire at the weekend. Everyone scored points for the club and we came 8th out of the 10 best clubs in the country, which considering we were one runner short and had a relatively young team is great. Results here http://www.leioc.org.uk/wordpress/lei_results/2022/Irchester-YBT22/index_clubresults.html We celebrated everyone’s runs afterwards with the traditional ice creams!

British Sprint Championship Medal for Sue

Sue Crickmore triumphed at Leeds University, with a cracking run to take the bronze medal in the W60 British Sprint Championship Final on Sunday 12th June 2022. Well done Sue.

SO AGM & Prizegiving 2022

The 2022 AGM was successfully held at Worth School on 4th June.

The club trophies and prizes were awarded and new officers elected. We still have two outstanding roles of Social Secretary and POC coordinator.

SO Juniors Qualify for Yvette Baker Trophy Final

Our team of 16 juniors put in a great performance at Worthlodge to qualify for the Yvette Baker Trophy final, the annual junior inter-club competition. Our 9 highest placed runners scored 897 points.

For many of our juniors this was their first time competing for the club and for four of our younger juniors they paired up to complete a yellow course without shadowing for the first time.

Mole Valley and Dartford Orienteering Club were also competing, but they took part in the Yvette Baker Shield event as they have smaller junior teams and the best 5 scores count towards the final result. Mole Valley scored 498 points and DFOK scored 300 points.

JK Success in Wales over Easter

Well done to everyone who took part in the JK2022 - the annual international Festival of Orienteering - which always take place over the Easter weekend. We competed in very varied terrain from University to iron workings to mine workings to a military training site. Great competition, technical areas, social assembly areas and great weather made for a great weekend. Special congratulations to Mike Gammon M90 who became JK Champion, Emils, Tommy and Nick Jarvis who won the JK Men's Short Relay event and Ruth Rhodes W80 who became JK Sprint Champion. Take a look at the maps and routes here. More photos if you read on ...

SO relay teams triumph at British Champs

Congratulations to Andy Parkinson, Di Turner and Robin Smith who took the British Champs title convincingly in the M/W70+ competition. We also followed in SO tradition and performed well in the short relays with silver medals in both the men's short relay (Liam Marsh, Will Heap, Alan Velecky) and women's short relay (Scarlet Heap, Heather High and Anna Chapman).

Eleven teams took part altogether and there was lots of support on the run in for all.

Pat Maher takes M85 British Champion title by 20 seconds

Pat Maher took his first British Champion title at the British Long Champs at Golden Valley near Liphook on 26th March. He won it by only 20 seconds - close competition! Mike Gammon made it onto the podium in silver in M90, Heather High also raced to silver in W16A (missing the top spot by only 31s) and Amelia Bartlett running in W20 Elite won bronze in another well fought competition.

March Club Coaching

Will Heap, one of our Club Coaches ran a fantastic coaching session in the sunshine at Cowdray Forest near Crawley. Participants included children from the age of 11 upwards and adults of all ages who take part in orange to black courses. Everyone had a great day and learnt so much from the different exercises.

We started off with a gentle warm up, led by Scarlet and then split off into three groups.

Strong Junior Performance at Compass Sport Cup

A very strong performance from our junior squad M/W12 to M/W20 helped SO win the regional heat of the annual interclub competition on 13th March. The terrain was really physical with lots of slippery mud around, but our juniors put in an excellent performance on the Balcombe Estate. Our juniors competed in courses from Orange to Short Brown and a number of them ran up on longer courses than their age category, but still beat the competition.

SO win regional heat of Compass Sport Cup

On 13th March 76 members of SO took part in the SE region of the Compass Sport Cup Heats. This is an annual inter-club competition open to all club members. Anyone who is able to do at least an orange has the opportunity to score points for the club and those that don't score points help to push points down against other clubs. It's always a fun occasion. We had seven class winners scoring top points and lots of top three scorers as well as plenty of other runners packed into the results.

CSC and Relays Spring 2022

After a fairly blank year in 2021 the major interclub competitions are hopefully back to normal this year. A Doodle poll has been set up for club members to indicate whether or not they are able/willing to compete/help at these events. Further information about these events is given below.

Spring Club Nights

Club nights returned on Tuesday January 11th. Although all activities will be held outdoors please maintain social distancing and do not come if you are showing symptoms of Covid or have tested positive.

We will meet as a group at 6:30pm each Tuesday although we hope to make many of the activities available online to attempt at your leisure.

Please sign up using the Doodle Poll and indicate (when appropriate) whether or not you would like a map provided (cost £1) or are happy to print off your own.

Event entries on Racesignup

We reviewed the current entry procedure for SO events on racesignup at our recent monthly committee meeting and agreed to add the "number of available maps" for each course. Note that maps for each event are normally printed on about the Monday before the event (yet entries remain open until the evening before the event) but there have recently been instances where the number of entries for a particular course has exceeded the number of printed maps. We are unwilling to "recycle" maps for Covid reasons and wish to avoid anyone having the disappointment of turning up but not being able to run. Club members can help by entering our events sooner - this will allow us the opportunity to print more maps where we appear to have underestimated demand.