Junior News
SEOA Cloth Badges awarded to our Juniors
At the AGM we awarded a number of juniors with their SEOA Colour Coded badges. These can be won by any member of the South East Orienteering Association. The rules require that you complete three colour coded courses and come in the top 50% or have a time within 150% of the winning time. Congratulations to all the juniors who have qualified for a badge.
If you weren't there to collect it, please get in touch with Will to arrange collection.
Read on to see the list of successful juniors...
SO Annual Prize Winners 2022/2023
The Southdowns Orienteers annual prize giving took place today, congratulations to:
- Sue Crickmore - Senior Performance Shield
- Darrell High - Senior Performance Shield
- Emma Chapman - Gold Junior Performance Certificate and £30.00 Voucher
- Emily Waters - Silver Junior Performance Certificate and £20.00 Voucher
- Heather High – Bronze Junior Performance Certificate and £10.00 Voucher
- Ben Chapman - Gold Junior Performance Certificate and £30.00 Voucher
- Tommy Heap - Silver Junior Performance Certificate and £20.00 Voucher
- James Curtis - Bronze Junior Performance Certificate and £10.00 Voucher
- Ben Chapman - Ricky Wise Junior Trophy
- Joe Barrett - SOOTY Trophy
Medals at JK2023 Relays
The JK2023 relays took place at Dale Park in the Lake District. SO fielded ten, three person teams in six different relay categories. SO have a history of placing well in the Men's and Women's Short Relay category so there were several teams in each.
The teams did well with Heather High W18, Ali High W45 and Scarlet Heap W20 gaining silver in the Women's Short and the family team of Stan M21, Will M50 and Tommy Heap M18 gaining a bronze medal in the Men's Short competition.
Success at JK2023 Individual Days
This year's JK took place in the Lake District and a large contingent of Southdowners from aged 9 to over 90 took part. Day 1 was a sprint around Lancaster University and Day's 2 and 3 were individual races in the technically challenging areas of High Dam and Bigland.
Two of our youngest juniors, Lucas and Harriet, had stand out performances winning the M10B and W10B courses over the two individual days. Roger Maher became JK champion in the M85 age category and Mike Gammon got silver in M90.
British Championship Medals
Roger put in a sterling performance at the British Champs to win back his British Champion title, winning the M85 competition by over 12 minutes. Silver medals were won by Mike Gammon in the M90 class and Ruth Rhodes in the W80 class and bronze by Scarlet Heap in the W20 Elite course. Congratulations to them all.
A large team of Southdowners took part in the British Champs at Hambledon in March. We all had some really long courses, but enjoyed the challenge and the atmosphere at the event. Some of our youngest members also ran their first white course unaccompanied at a British Champs and put in an excellent performance.
Interland 2023 - a junior's perspective
On 5th March three of our juniors (Ben, Tommy and Scarlet) travelled to Belgium as part of the England team for Interland 2023. England competes annually in this match against the French, the two Belgian teams: the Flemish OV and French speaking Fédération Régionale des Sports d’Orientation (FRSO), the Netherlands – Nederlandse Oriënteringsloop Bond (NOLB). This year as guests, a team for Luxembourg competed hors concours. The Interland race was staged in the Kattenbos forest by Lommel, 64km E of Antwerp. Typically Flemish terrain featured small well mapped relief, predominantly coniferous trees, some semi-open heathland, “challenging sand dune orienteering; fast in the open forest, blocks of limited visibility”.
Read on for the results and a report from Ben who was selected to join the England team for the first time.