Latest ONSW News

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.

Newcastle resumes formal mountain bike orienteering events on Sunday (Nov 28) with the Hunter Valley Champs at Killingworth South.

This will double as the first event of the BOSS (Bike Orienteering Summer Series). Details are here.

Further dates in the BOSS can be found on our MTBO web page.

In the meantime, Newcastle has launched two MTBO courses that can be done using the free MapRun app - at Jesmond Park (Newcastle LGA) and Myall Road (Lake Macquarie LGA).

Both maps have riding areas with a mix of bushland, parks and urban cycleways. Details are here.

Stunning rock pagodas were the feature of the NSW Championships near Lithgow at the weekend as our State League season restarted (and finished).

Around 300 competitors from four states enjoyed cool conditions with less rain than forecast.

Former JWOC rep Melissa Thomas (Bennelong) wound back the clock to win W21A on both days, ahead of SA-Big Foot junior star Emily Sorensen who was running up an age class.

In M21A it was a Victorian trifecta on both days, with Patrick Jaffe and 2019 junior world sprint champ Aston Key sharing the spoils, and Brodie Nankervis in third place each time. The trio are ranked Australia's top three male orienteers.

For the Long at Long Swamp on Sunday, the very recent high rainfall and the significant regrowth since the fires (and limited access to the area during lockdown) meant some hasty replanning over the 10 days leading into the weekend.

This resulted in some compromises to ensure a safe swamp crossing and to avoid too much of the dark green stuff, while using as much of the rock as possible.

A big thank you to our hosts Central Coast and Uringa whose preparations were hampered by the long lockdown but still put on a superb weekend.

Twelve of the 14 NSW clubs had wins over the weekend. All the results and links are on our State League page.

All participants are asked to please fill out the very brief Course Setter of the Year surveys here.

The 2022 State League starts on March 19-20 with the NSW Sprint Champs on the Central Coast and a Long distance event in Newcastle. Stay tuned for full details.