Latest ONSW News
Meet your Board member.
This is the eighth in a weekly series where we introduce you to the people entrusted to run our sport in NSW.
Board member Briohny Seaman (WaggaRoos Orienteers). Year joined Board: 2020
Briohny Seaman is our Board member with elite orienteering experience.
The youngest member on our Board was in four winning NSW Schools teams and has represented the NSW Stingers on and off for around 20 years.
Unfortunately, injury has plagued most of Briohny’s elite years. In 2009 she had lower leg issues and in 2013 was diagnosed with a rare vascular condition. She decided to wait until she’d had children (Ryder in 2012 and Logan in 2014) and they were older before having major surgery in 2018.
The enjoyment of orienteering and running has definitely returned since then. And she rates going to the World Masters in 2018 as one of her career highlights.
Briohny had never given any thought to being on the Board until approached last year. The opportunity to have input into the way the sport is run at a state level interested her.
And with Waggaroos struggling with membership, Briohny knows it’s important for her and the club to find ways to encourage and keep new members.
She has been on the Waggaroos committee and is now keen to get more involved in getting orienteering into local schools.
Briohny loves course setting and has set at a number of State Leagues, QB3 2017 and Oceania 2019.
Professionally, Briohny has worked for the NSW government for 16 years. Firstly, with Roads and Maritime Services and now with the Environment Protection Authority.
Both roles have given her exposure to various types of stakeholder engagement: with communities, local councils and other state organisations.
Her family started orienteering in 1988 (when Briohny was 6), after her parents Alex and Debbie Davey took the family to a Waggaroos “Come and Try It” event at Pomingalarna.
Briohny then grew up orienteering with a big group of local families: the Joneses, Dickinsons, McGarvas, Johansens and Mackens.
It’s this strong sense of family and community you’ll find throughout orienteering.
Sunday (November 14) marked 50 years since the first orienteering event in NSW.
Eleven hardy competitors (seven of them from New Zealand) made the trek to Mount Hay in the Blue Mountains for an outing that even today would test Bear Grylls' thirst for adventure.
The inaugural event was a 6.6km line course with 330m of climb, on a black-and-white government map with little more than contours and a couple of roads and tracks. The scale was 1:31,680, with 15m contours. Ouch!
ONSW life member Dave Lotty (pictured, right) is one of the originals and was in action again today at the River and Bay Series event at Earlwood, on an urban map the polar opposite of what he was confronted with five decades ago.
Mount Hay led to the formation of our first club, Bennelong, in December 1971 and what is now called Orienteering NSW in 1972. You can read the story of how the very first event came about here - with the map in full.
A massive thank you to Dave for the enthralling history lesson!
Meet your Board member.
This is the seventh in a weekly series where we introduce you to the people entrusted to run our sport in NSW.
Name: Louise Brooks (SHOO). Joined the Board: 2021
Louise is our newest director, from the Southern Highlands club.
Her initial tasks are liaising with Outdoors NSW & ACT, with whom ONSW is affiliated and who advocate to government on behalf of many outdoor activity providers, and with National Parks.
Louise first started orienteering during the 2012-2013 Sydney Summer series on the Majors Bay map. She has steadily increased her skills and rates the highlight of her orienteering as this year’s State League weekend in the sand dunes at Broulee on the NSW south coast where she says she finally felt some confidence in the bush.
Louise has volunteered at various events, starting with an ONSW promotional event at Hornsby Heights.
She is also a member of Woodstock Runners, a community running club in Sydney’s inner west, is a Level 1 running coach and co-ordinates the coaching roster there.
As a Registered Nurse for more than 30 years, Louise brings a whole range of skills and experiences to the Board.
She joined the Board to learn more about how things work in orienteering.
Away from maps and navigation, she loves all sport and supports Tottenham Hotspur in the English Premier League.
Congratulations to the eight NSW orienteers chosen for Orienteering Australia's high performance squads for 2022.
Alastair George (Big Foot), our state's No.1 orienteer, has been selected in the top-level High Performance squad after consistent results in his first year competing in the senior ranks.
Duncan Currie and UK-based Michele Dawson (Garingal) along with Toby Wilson and South Australian recruit Emily Sorensen (Big Foot) are in the second-tier National Development squad.
Big Foot trio Tracy Bluett, Paula Shingler and Jock Davis are the ND leadership team and bring decades of elite experience to the role.
OA is trialling a different HP set-up in 2022, with just the two senior squads.
