Latest ONSW News
A massive 675 students enjoyed a big day out at Armidale last Friday.
Northern Tablelands had all hands on deck at Gara Dam Travelling Stock Reserve for what is our biggest annual schools day.
NTOC offers a score course for beginners in teams of 2-4, and a line course (solo or in pairs) for those students with some orienteering experience.
Terry Cooke's excellent photo album captures the spirit of the day. The club backed up with a local event at the same location on Sunday.
Multiple JWOC representative Nicola Blatchford represented orienteering on a panel of elite female athletes inspiring young girls to take up and remain in sport today.
Nicola (centre of pic) was joined by Australian reps in rugby, basketball, hockey and goalball to chat to 80 teenagers as part of the Girls Get Active program, held in Sydney.
Each of the 5 gave some background of their sport and outlined training, setbacks and highs of their careers. The schoolgirls participated in some brief clinics of rugby union, hockey, AFL and goalball before doing a quick 20-minute score course around Blackman Park.
Many of the girls didn't realise orienteering 'was even a sport' but took to the challenge with gusto.
ONSW thanks SportNSW and Lane Cove Council for the invitation and looks forward to further involvement in this great initiative.
Seven NSW riders won 11 titles at the ACT MTBO Champs at the weekend.
Big Foot's Eoin Rothery (M60) won the Middle and Long titles, as did Nat Carroll (SHOO, M12), Rhiannon Prentice (Newcastle, W16) and Tim Hackney (NC, Open 3).
After mispunching on Saturday, Uringa's Ori Gudes took out the Long champs on Sunday in the M40 age class, as did Nat's dad Martyn Carroll in Open 4. In the Middle champs on Saturday, Robert Prentice (NC, M50, pictured) won riding down an age division.
NSW riders also claimed four second placings and a third, making it a successful weekend following the NSW and Australian champs the previous weekend in the Southern Highlands.
Congratulations to all the riders who attended.
Orienteering will feature on ABC television's Catalyst program early next year after filming a segment at Centennial Park on Tuesday.
Presenter Lily Serna, whom you may remember as the maths genius on SBS' Letters and Numbers show, was looking at how we use numbers in everyday life.
Using a simple puzzle such as an orienteering course to replicate perhaps a courier's workday, or anyone's list of errands for that matter, Lily wanted to compare routes and outcomes using several methods or algorithms.
The first would be 'nearest neighbour' - where you go to the closest control, then the closest one to that, etc, until all have been visited.
The second is the optimal route, calculated by mathematician Chris Brown (pictured left with Lily) - a regular SSS buff who a few years ago produced a Sydney Summer Series Solutions blog post showing the shortest, flattest and optimal routes for each score from 0-600 for that week's course.
The third was by 'human brain', meaning the two participants had to to try to work out the route they thought would be the best.
The ABC supplied three staffers with no knowledge of orienteering and paired them with three orienteers - NSW Stinger Lisa Grant, NSW Schools team member Clare Jessup, and ONSW Marketing & Comms man Ian Jessup.
Each pair was followed by a cameraman and sound guy, which meant regular stops to allow them to catch up and do retakes of strategic conversations and general O thoughts as the pairs made their way around the different routes.
We're not going to reveal the outcome or who did which course (we don't believe in spoiler alerts), so you'll have to tune in early in 2018 to see who 'won'.
Suffice to say, it was a lot of fun for all involved. We gained an appreciation of how a 15-minute segment can take seven hours to film (and many more to edit), and the ABC folk learned about basic orienteering in an informative, entertaining manner. It's also the kind of publicity that small sports dream of.
A big thank you to Robert Newman for doing SI, Barbara Hill for GPS tracking, Chris for his maths input, and the three orienteers for their time. Also a big thanks to the ABC for inviting us to participate, and to Centennial Park for allowing us to film there.
