Junior News
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 ...
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.
Juniors learn about contours at Washington Common
At Washington Common on 22nd January, we held our third training session of the season for our younger juniors and some new adults. We had a great turnout and had four large groups taking part. Our main focus for this session was understanding the brown features on the map. Washington Common is a good venue for this as there are lots of steeper features.
We started by looking at contours on the map and comparing them to a 3D model to help picture the ground. Can you see how the model relates to the map below? You may need to rotate it slightly!
SO take over a third of class winner titles in the South East Long Champs
The South East Long Champs took place at the same event as the Southern Champs at South Ashdown on 12th Dec 2021. The proximity of the event meant that lots of SO members were able to attend and we walked away with 13 South East Long Distance Champions. Great to see some new medal winners in the list!
SO has five new Southern Champions
Congratulations to Emma Chapman (W10), Scarlet Heap (W18), Chris Hooker (M60), Di Turner (W70) and Roger Maher (M80) who have now become Champions of the South of England. They all took part in the Southern Long Distance Champs at South Ashdown on 12th Dec 2021.