Latest ONSW News
Entries are now open for the 2020 NSW championships which will be held in Eugowra in the central west of NSW on April 18-19.
That's the weekend after the big annual Easter carnival, which is close by in Molong.
The NSW Middle and Long champs are in bushranger country - set amongst the myriad of granite rocks which provided the cover for the famous stage coach hold-up by Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall and the rest of the gang at nearby Eugowra.
The course also takes in the mining source of the pink granite for Parliament House. Better still, the area provides top class granite orienteering on a map that was used for the 2004 Australian Championships.
It's perfect finale for a week of orienteering in the central west of NSW. Your visit to this beautiful part of NSW will also support our regional communities during this dry spell.
Check out the terrain in this video.
You can enter both events via this link and read Bulletin 1 here.
Our next Level 0 coaching course will be on Wed Jan 22 from 12-4pm at Sydney Olympic Park.
Level 0 is for people coaching newcomers / children, and will include a brief intro in how to use Purple Pen to set courses. For people wishing to coach in the Sporting Schools program, it will include the OK-GO kit.
Please email Jim Mackay (development @ onsw.asn.au) if you are interested. They are free for orienteering club members and some parking can be arranged.
The workshop will finish in time for people to get to the Sydney Summer Series event at Hunters Hill that afternoon.
A massive 125 participants took on Newcastle's monthly mountain bike orienteering course at Holmesville on Sunday, setting a new record for attendance outside a big championship.
The club has been growing its MTBO participation nicely over the past 2 years and was blown away by the turnout on a cooler summer's day.
With a particular focus on making newcomers (especially families) feel welcome, their efforts are being rewarded.
They had just enough maps but Joy Guy had to race home to pick up the street SI cards as they had run out of the club's SI hire sticks.
This venue was used for the 2019 NSW Long Distance MTBO champs - in very wet conditions - but BOSS 4 offered much more favourable riding.
Greg Bacon and Robert Prentice spread the 30 controls on an A3 map at 1:5000 for easier reading of the intricate track network, and only Tim Doman and Steven Todkill managed to clear the course in the 75 minutes allowed.
Here's some of the lovely feedback from rookies:
Carmen Allen: "Thank you so much to the organisers and volunteers. First timer today and even though I run all these trails regularly it was still a great challenge to navigate and find the controls. Looking forward to the next one already."
Michelle Caslick: "Thank you for an incredible morning. It was our first MTB orienteering event and absolutely loved it! Everyone was so welcoming and so helpful - loved that we were guided to what needed to be done when we arrived made it so much easier - thank you!"
Stacey Levin: "This was my first orienteering event and I absolutely loved it, will definitely be back".
You can see our 2020 MTBO calendar here.
Thanks again to the Newcastle club for their excellent work. The next event is on February 16 at Fairley Dams.
We are proud to announce that membership of ONSW has jumped nearly 10 per cent in 2019 to a record 1,386.
Add in some schools and partner members and we are up over 1,400 for the first time - compared with 1,288 at the end of 2018.
Five clubs enjoyed double-digit growth for the calendar year.
Please renew for 2020, if you are already a member of ONSW and familiar with the membership arrangements you may go straight to the Eventor login page to renew your membership and continue all membership benefits and fees including access to redeem your Active Kids vouchers.
And our Facebook page is the most popular of all the states, sitting on 1447 likes - a whopping increase of 40% this year!
Thanks to everyone for their support in 2019 - we look forward to a great 2020 highlighted by Easter in the rock at Gumble.
