SPRING SC-ORE School Orienteering - Registrations Open
Sunday, 10 September 2017
SPRING
SC-ORE School Orienteering - Term 4
series starts Thursday 19 October.
4-person
relay - 2 Boys and 2 Girls Primary school years 3 to 6 make a team. REGISTRATION NOW OPEN LESS THAN 2 WEEKS TO GET YOUR TEAMS ENTERED  
Stage 1: North Ainslie Primary School - 19 Oct
Stage 2:
Ngunnawal Primary School – 26 Oct
Stage 3: Emmaus Primary School, Dickson – 2 Nov
Stage 4: St Thomas More’s Primary School, Campbell – 9 Nov
Get those brains and bodies going! Four Thursday Mornings EARLY 8am
Cost: $20
for 4-week series. Entries close: 22 September.
More Details
can be found HERE
Check out
the 2
minute SC-ORE video
Register
your child HERE
Please email schools@act.orienteering.asn.au if you have any questions
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Junior League Final at Mt Jerra
Wednesday, 6 September 2017
 Lots of information for the Junior League final this weekend at Mt Jerra.
http://new-act.orienteering.asn.au/2017/09/junior-league-final-at-mt-jerra/ For info about SC-ORE School Orienteering visit http://act.orienteering.asn.au/juniors/blue-sparks/sc-ore/
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Get Yourself to Glendale
Wednesday, 30 August 2017
ACT orienteering returns to Glendale
in Namadgi National Park after a 5-year hiatus for the 2017 ACT Long Distance Championships on 17 September. Substantial remapping by Hugh
Moore has provided the course planner, Matt Crane, with an excellent palette
upon which to plan his courses. Grassland, woodland and granite will greet
every orienteer who chooses to accept the challenge presented by Abominable
O-men.
Entries close Wednesday 6 September so get your running shoes on if you want to be part of this year’s
Championships. There is a course for everyone. Pre-enter via Eventor by the closing date. Limited
enter-on-the-day is available at the same entry fee.
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Who will be crowned King & Queen of the Mountain next Saturday at Aranda?
Monday, 28 August 2017
 Course setter Zoe and a new termite mound that is not mapped!
Just to make the penultimate 2017 Metro/Junior League event more fun, the Aranda Bushlands map has not been updated for a while. Some termite mounds have disappeared and new ones have appeared! Do not rely on termite mounds for navigation. There are also some new unmapped tracks. PLUS - All courses have a Queen/King Of The Mountain leg, with a chocolate prize for the fastest female and fastest male on Green/Blue and Orange1/2 for this leg. The Queen/King Of the Mountain Leg is marked on the control description and at the control at the start of the leg. See you there!
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Ski -O Success!
Thursday, 17 August 2017
  
Red Roos
Fedor and Marina Iskhakov/a set great courses with challenging route choices.
Excellent ski conditions meant that short cuts off track were a real option
saving up to 60 seconds on some legs. The trick was to decide which corners
were worth cutting!
Participants came from 4 states
and Canada and Switzerland with 50 people in total. The Snogaine and Kids Snow
Treasure Hunt sections proved popular. Some even competed in snowshoes – a
minor handicap if you were competitive but no handicap for enjoyment.
Pictures are here
Results and splits here
Look out for next year’s Ski
Orienteering Champs in early August and we hope to hold a “practice’ event two
weeks before with some ski instruction for non- skiers
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2017 Wildfire Winter Classics Offer Rare Challenges
Monday, 14 August 2017
Entries close via Eventor at 11.59 pm on Wednesday 16 August 2017. No late entries can be accepted The 2017 Wildfire Winter Classics, which are both National League and ACT League events, will offer regular orienteers
rare challenges over the weekend of 26-27 August. Wildfire Sports Sponsorship Prizes. Wildfire Sports have kindly offered a series of
prizes including a headlamp, hydration vests, sporting clothing, etc. These
will be available for the first two placegetters on each of the four elite
classes on both days. The Wildfire Sports
Ultralong (National Orienteering League # 11; ACT
League # 9) will be held at The Gib (Gibraltar Hill) ) a steep,
boulder-strewn high hill a few kilometres south-east of Bungendore on Saturday
26 August. The courses for the National
League classes will be ultralong and other Hard (Red) courses will be similar
in length to Long Distance Championships. All Hard courses will have mass starts. As the number of Hard courses is limited some
of the class groupings will differ from the usual groupings. The map will be The Gib at 1:10,000
with 5 metre contours. The map was first used for the 2013 Australian Middle
Distance Championship and used for a couple of ACT events since then. The Wildfire Sports Galaxy
(National Orienteering League # 12; ACT League # 10) will be held at Aranda
Snow Gums, William Hovell Drive ACT, 6 kilometres west of the Canberra
GPO. It will be a matched-race for pairs
of competitors with multiple loops undertaken in different order by the two
competitors. For each course, competitors will have a common final loop or a
common last control. NOL matches would
be based on NOL rankings as at 1 August and competitors seeded
accordingly. Competitors will start in
reverse order to their rankings, with the highest ranked pair starting last.
The designed winning time will be 25 minute winning time. Starts will be at one
minute intervals. The same format will apply to the other Hard classes, with
competitors matched on the basis of being in the same or a comparable Age
Class. Other classes will have standard formats. The map will be Aranda Snow Gums 2017 at 1:5,000, with 2.5
metre contours. It is a new map of an
area which is predominantly gully spur terrain with several significant erosion
gullies. It includes areas of farmland that is no longer grazed and areas of
wooded forest. There are numerous dams on the map and large marshy sections.
The full details for the events are set out in the 2017
Winter Classics Info Sheet.
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“Cockatoos” set courses for Wanniassa Hills - Sat 12 Aug.
Monday, 7 August 2017
Abominable Cockatoos, Belinda and Ian Lawford have put pen to paper and produced some challenging courses on Wanniassa Hills.  
Venture south for some stunning views and courses starting from the less frequented South Western corner of the map.  
In a possible first for OACT, the very easy (Blue) and easy (Green) courses visit completely different areas of the map. A short moderate (Orange 3) course of just 2km is on offer for those more mature orienteers looking to avoid the rocky slopes or others just looking for a good view over the Brindabellas. So pack a lunch, join the locals and head south on Saturday for an Abominably awesome event.  
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Double-header Begins Lead Up to Australian Championships
Tuesday, 1 August 2017
  
This
weekend’s double-header begins the lead up to the 2017 Australian Championships. The events being offered are:
- 2017 Saturday Metro & Junior League event # 11 at
Remembrance Park, and
- 2017 ACT
League event # 8, a Bush Sprint Distance at Mt Taylor, which will be a good
lead up event for ACT League # 10 Aranda Snow Gums on 27 August.
Saturday Metro & Junior League # 11.
Bushflyers course
planner Peter Antcliff has prepared courses that provide a variety of leg lengths
on the Orange courses with blend of short legs, interspersed with long legs
offering route choices. The course
details are here. The Junior League
standings after 9 rounds are here.
ACT League # 8. Red Roos course planner Michael
Burt has designed a menu of seven courses on a Sprint Distance map at a scale
of 1:5000. Of the four Red courses the Red 1, Red 2 and Red 3
courses involve loops. The Red 1 course uses a two sided map with a map flip
part way around the course. All Red
course maps will be handed out at the start.
More details about the event are here.
2017 ACT League Standings.
The 2017 ACT League/Wehner Cup competition has passed the mid-point and
competitors have only four more events to improve the standings, the current
points table is here. The top five
competitors, with their best four scores from six events are: - Zoe
Melhuish (pictured with the Jim Sawkins Classic Shield for which she won
Division 2 in 2017) 529 points
- Tristan Miller
517
- Matthew
Crane 515
- Ella
Cuthbert 514
- Tara
Melhuish 513
The final
scores will be based on competitors’ best six scores from 10 events, with the
final event being the 2017 ACT Long Distance Championships at Glendale on Sunday
17 September.
ACT Schools Team. The ACT team to contest the 2017 SSA Orienteering Championships has been named and congratulations to the 20
students who have been named to defend the title won by the ACT in 2016.
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Kowen Forest this Sunday, 23 July. ACT League Event.
Monday, 17 July 2017
  
It’s almost seven weeks since the last ACT League event, so put on those running shoes and head out to Kowen Forest this Sunday, 23 July, for a good hit out on those longer and Red courses. Orange, Green and Blue courses, catering for all levels, are also available. Score some points for yourself in the ACT League competition and for your club in the Inter Club challenge. This is also a selection race for the ACT Schools team for the Australian Championships in Sept/Oct. Tony Garr from Parawanga Orienteers has done an amazing job at setting interesting and technical courses for all levels. Don’t miss them!
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Organisers’ Observations from Farrer Ridge 12 July 2017
Thursday, 13 July 2017
Here is the Course Planner waiting (in the shade) for
customers to arrive
These are the “OO” moments (Organisers’ Observations)
from the Wednesday lunchtime event at Farrer Ridge on 12 July.
The weather was beautiful (well, for mid winter it was)
prompting 43 people to hit the slopes of Farrer Ridge.
Some people were sampling the friendly, low tech
Wednesday lunchtime orienteering for the first time. They included people from
Street Orienteering, Map Mates and some very long time orienteers who had just
never got around to it. There were even some interstate “interlopers” who are
becoming regulars at OACT events.
The extensive seating provided by the organisers for
marking up maps was appreciated ie the cavaletti or wooden ‘stepovers’ for
horses situated at many Canberra Nature Parks; see photo on right. More photos and the maps at Facebook.
All participants claimed they enjoyed the experience,
even if they missed the occasional control(s) for varying reasons; see results. Some of the
explanations for missing controls were entertaining like having the map
oriented at control 5 so that you read control 9 as control 6 and hence
navigated from control 5 to control 9 (and then deciding it was not worth going to 6)!
Lesson of the day was:
If
you get another person to mark up your map, then you really should check it
yourself. Especially if it was your mother!
Next week's event is in the far North at Mt Rogers with Bill Jones preparing the courses and he will back up on the following Saturday (21 July) as the course planner for Saturday Metro & Junior League event # 9 at The Pinnacle. And for the keen competitors, on the next day they can go Tony Garr's ACT League event # 7 at Kowen East on Sunday 22 July.
John & Ann Scown
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Follow our Aussie Orienteering Stars on the World Stage
Thursday, 6 July 2017
  
The Australian Team for the World Orienteering Championships (including our own Matt Crane & Belinda Lawford ) are now in Estonia competing at WOC!. Competition started on Friday with the sprint qualification. You can follow the team in several ways:
**And you can follow ACT's Tara Melhuish and the rest of the team preparing for JWOC, on their blog **
JWOC Webpage
JWOC Facebook page
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Mt Ainslie North next Saturday - Start July on a High!
Tuesday, 27 June 2017
There
is still one more ACT Metro and Junior League event before the two week break
over the ACT school holidays!
Parawanga
Orienteers will be hosting Round 8 at Mt Ainslie North next Saturday, 01 Jul '17.
This
event is part of the School Team selection trials series and there will be two
Red courses available (limited extra maps so first in first served) along with
the usual Orange, Green & Blue options.
The
course setter, Jon Glanville, and vetter Nathan Guinness (with helper Aidan) caught
up at the Farrer Ridge event last Saturday to discuss the finer details of the
excellent courses Jon has prepared!
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New OACT Logo
Thursday, 22 June 2017
 Orienteering ACT is currently developing a new website and as part of that process we are going to get a new logo! The OACT board members have narrowed down the new logo to three possible designs, and we would love YOU to vote for your favourite.
If you are interested in the rationale behind two of the concepts, please see here Vote for your favourite logo: Online Poll
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Commonwealth Park - Inner city map always fun for families and fast runners
Friday, 16 June 2017
  
Anticipate a fine but cool 14 degrees for Saturday at Commonwealth Park. Good luck with the sprint format courses set by Junior Bushflyer Caitlin Young (pictured left). Thanks to Jo (pictured right) and Andrew Hobson for event organising this weekend. As this is also a selection event for our ACT schools representative team, show your support for our juniors by buying up big at the cake stall this Saturday. Cakes are home baked and always full of orienteering wisdom. Thanks to Tom de Jongh for photos.
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Young and Old Share the Honours in Jim Sawkins Classic
Monday, 5 June 2017
Photos from left: Jim Sawkins Classic Shield, Grant Bluett, Zoe Melhuish
Honours were shared by young and old in the 2017 Jim Sawkins
Classic. Grant Bluett, one of the oldest
competitors on the Red 1 course won Division 1 on age/gender handicap and Zoe
Melhuish among the youngest on the Red 2 and 3 courses won Division 2 on age/gender
handicap.
The 10th Jim Sawkins Classic was held on Sunday 4 June 2017
to commemorate the life and death of Red Roos and OACT stalwart Jim Sawkins at
Goorooyaroo on Sunday 4 June 2006. The
Classic started as a low key event on Sunday 6 July 2008 and the ‘rules’ for the
event have been gradually refined to increase its status. The Red Roos are now in a position to
establish firm rules for the Classic.
Just on 100 competitors faced the Starter, with four courses
having Mass starts, two with optional Mass starts on a single course and two
courses with normal starts. Red 3 course with
40 starters attracted the largest field.
Course planner Mark Gregson prepared challenging courses which required
competitors on the Red and Orange courses to observe careful navigation and to
check their control numbers; some of whom did not and they paid the price.
The links to results, splits and related competitions are: The next ACT
League event will be at Kowen East on Sunday 23 July.
The Jim
Sawkins Classic capped off a great weekend of Orienteering in the ACT with the Saturday
Metro event at Black Mountain attracting a record number of entries, 254, and a
record number of participants, 298, for a metropolitan event. The courses prepared by junior, Brendan
Wilson, attracted praise from many competitors. The results and related items
are: The next Saturday
Metro event will be at Commonwealth Park on Saturday 17 June.
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