Latest ONSW News
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.
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.
We are happy to announce we will have a second orienteering scholar joining us in time for Christmas.
Tuve Moeller, is 19 and has just finished school in Uppsala in Sweden. For the past three years he was at a so called orienteering-gymnasium, which means that except normal classes they had daily orienteering trainings with the school.
He reports: "I am also a member of OK Linné, the biggest orienteering club in Sweden with many youths, elders and elite runners, the section of which I’m a part of right now.
"From August to December I’m working for Swedish State Rail and am training as much as possible with the club. When I don’t run I spend my time writing, taking pictures for and updating the club's social media and web page.
"I have also set trainings for the club etc and drawn some urban maps in OCAD, so I am familiar with OCAD.
"I like to talk to people to learn new things, and learn how to do things better and to share my own experiences. I also like being outdoors very much, and spend time in the forest even when I’m not running orienteering. :-)
"I'm really looking forward to coming to NSW and to experience orienteering your way!"
Clubs that wish to use Tuve for coaching or mapping should contact Jim Mackay.
A phenomenal turnout of 132 meant we ran out of maps on the final day of our 2017 ASC expansion program on Sunday.
The free Berowra Heights event was held in conjunction with Central Coast's summer series and had the little club run off their feet as 96 newcomers joined three dozen regulars on a gorgeous late spring morning at Warrina Street Oval.
Our overworked but overjoyed organiser Paul Prudhoe reports: "It never stopped from just before 9am until about 10.30 or so.
"A few people competed at more than one event, while one primary school lad and his mum did all 3 days, running about 20km all up."
The three events at Berowra had just on 200 participants all up - plus at least two large lizards.
The encouraging attendances in northern Sydney, Singleton and Port Macquarie over the past five weeks have generated lots of interest in orienteering and may lead to a new club forming.
We have more weekends to deliver early next year in the Upper Hunter Valley and on the mid north coast, so stay tuned and let any friends in those areas know we are coming!
ONSW thanks all the mappers, organisers, setters, helpers and results people who delivered these programs - and equal thanks to the landowners and girl guide groups for permissions.
