Meet your Board member.
This is the ninth and final in a weekly series where we introduce you to the people entrusted to run our sport in NSW.
Board member Andrew Power (Newcastle). Joined the Board 2015.
Years of rugby – and its inevitable knee injuries – have turned Andrew Power’s occasional dalliances in foot orienteering into a passion for the mountain bike format.
Andrew did some orienteering at school and was pretty handy, but it was not until 1985 – when at uni with current clubmate Glenn Burgess – that he competed in his first Newcastle event. Rugby prevailed, though, and Andrew’s O days were sparse.
He became a more regular competitor in 2007, and in 2009 discovered you could do orienteering on a bike as well. While Andrew won the Newcastle OY a couple of times in the Hard Medium category, he soon found he was more competitive in MTBO than Foot O.
And that’s where he has made a huge impact:
• travelling to most states in Australia and NZ to compete in MTBO
• winning the Australian MTBO series in M50 four times
• helping the Australian team win the Aus-NZ MTBO challenge a few times
• he’s currently chair of the new Australian MTBO commission
• Australian team manager for the most recent Aus-NZ challenge
Andrew has been Newcastle president for about 10 years, and on the ONSW board for 6 years - joining when it was short on numbers.
His aim at the time was to represent clubs outside of the Sydney area and to increase the profile of MTBO in NSW with the board, executive and foot orienteers.
Andrew is a Level 2 controller and has set and controlled local Newcastle events, organised and controlled State League foot events, and organised, set and controlled a number of state and national MTBO events. He’s controller for next year’s Australian MTBO champs.
He’s an electrical engineer by training with experience working in Australia, UK and SE Asia. He has worked as a senior manager in a large organisation for many years and has experience in interacting with and reporting to senior executives and boards.
We should also mention that time Andrew captained “Australia” in the Vietnam cricket competition in 2000. It was the first time in 10 years “Australia” lost the best-of-three final of the DHL Rolling Shield. Read about it here.
