8 ONSW athletes in OA HP squads
- Last Updated: Friday, 15 December 2017 10:38
Eight NSW orienteers have been named in the 2018 Orienteering Australia High Performance Squads.
Garingal has four representatives, while Newcastle and Big Foot have two each.
Nicola Blatchford and NSW junior squad coach Rob Bennett (NC) are in the second-tier National Development Squad, along with GO trio Toby Wilson (pictured) and Michele and Aidan Dawson.
Big Foot siblings Rebecca and Alastair George (pictured) are in the Junior Development Squad, along with Garingal's Duncan Currie (pictured).
Congratulations to these athletes. Each of the categories is explained on the OA website.
Meanwhile, OA has released details of its 2018 selection criteria and is calling for nominations for teams.
Hills win Course Setter of the Year award
- Last Updated: Tuesday, 28 November 2017 10:57
Congratulations to Matthew and Barbara Hill who have been named ONSW Course Setters of the Year for 2017.
The mother-and-son combination delivered outstanding courses at our recent NSW Sprint Champs at PLC Pymble, beating a high-quality field of setters in a heavy year of events for ONSW.
Here is some of the praise for the courses...
"Loved the fact that there was route choice to almost every control, right from the start - to stairs or not to stairs?"
"The map was extraordinary, the courses so well thought out and all in aid of a wonderful charity. What more could you want? NSW should be proud of such excellence."
The last major award to be announced for 2017 is the Interclub trophy, which has been retained by the Newcastle club based on its performances at State League events.
All our major award winners can be viewed in our archive. We congratulate all our winners and thank everyone for filling out the surveys.
Junghans worthy winners of President's Award
- Last Updated: Tuesday, 21 November 2017 13:56
Ron and Barbara Junghans have been acknowledged for more than 40 years of dedication to orienteering with the NSW President's Award.
Ron was already very active in the sport when he introduced it to our current president, Greg Barbour and other long-time orienteers, while a teacher at St Ives High School in the 1980s. It has been a lifetime of setting, mapping, controlling, organising and participating - not to mention allowing Garingal to store all their equipment at his shed.
Barbara has just been as busy over many years and in 2017 organised the Australian championships carnival at Bathurst and Hill End. This required three years of co-ordinating a large team and debuting three new maps in terrific gold mining terrain.
The President's Junior Award went to Big Foot's Lucy Mackie for her stunning performances at the junior MTBO champs in Lithuania in August. Lucy's silver medal in the opening Middle Distance race made her the first NSW orienteer to win a medal at a world titles.
The Cox's Cup Encouragement Award was won taken out by Jean and Basil Baldwin for their efforts in leading and expanding the Goldseekers club.
Club of the Year was again won by Newcastle, this time for running a superb Australian MTBO champs a considerable distance from home, and just a week after the Foot-O champs in which many members also competed.
Course Setter of the Year will be named once the surveys from Sunday's NSW Sprint Champs have been evaluated, and the OY badges will be distributed once the calculations from Sunday have been done.
All our major award winners can be viewed on our Honours and Awards web page. Congratulations to all our major award winners for 2017.
NSW Sprint Champs crown massive 2017
- Last Updated: Monday, 20 November 2017 23:39
Our NSW Sprint Champs put a big exclamation mark on the end of a big State League for 2017 with an awesome new map at PLC Pymble.
Carol Jacobson's masterpiece, brought to life by course setters Matthew and Barbara Hill, required intense concentration on every part of every leg to be a fitting finale to our peak competition.
The event drew ACT O royalty in open elite winners Martin Dent and Shannon Jones.
What a massive year it has been for ONSW: hosting the Australian 3-Days, then the Aus champs in Foot-O and MTBO over a fortnight.
Sunday continued the event management excellence with a charity event in conjunction. It was great to see orienteering supporting the community with all proceeds from the event going to the Sydney Children's Hospital at Westmead.
A small army of helpers and sponsors ensured a seamless, picture-perfect day in beautiful surrounds. The PLC students who had a run later remarked that they were unaware of just how much complex the campus is. We also thank the Member for Kuring-gai, Alister Henskens, for presenting the placegetters with their awards.
Thank you also to Pymble Ladies' College for providing the beautiful venue and many year 9 students to help on the day; 1st Pymble Scouts for the catering; St John's Ambulance for being on standby; and the long list of sponsors who contributed to the event.
Our SL web page has links to Sunday's results, Winsplits and Routegadget.
And please take two minutes to fill out the brief course survey. Feedback is important for setters and controllers and, more importantly, determines who wins the prestigious Course Setter of the Year award.
