NWOC newsletter April 2021

Hello everyone – We have done it! As Annemarie said, the national champions have been decided for another year, the medals have been handed out, the maps and courses analysed in detail and the borrowed equipment has found its way back to other clubs.  The weather was perfect, the venues absolutely first class and our wonderful course planners and controllers set challenges worthy of the National Orienteering Championships.  Thank you to everyone who contributed to make the champs, hosted by North West Orienteering Club, a resounding success. He Tangata, He Tangata, He Tangata - it is the people who make a club.

Special thanks to our event director, Annemarie, who was for months flat out behind the scenes, pulling together all the administrative threads, and co-ordinating all the many tasks that go into making a successful Nationals. Read her final NZOC2021 newsletter below for a great summing up.

There was little time to relax after Easter however, as a number of club members volunteered their time to ensure that the Auckland Schools Sprint Finals provided a great double-header for nearly 375 students.

At long last we can look forward to running on the new Robinson Road map of Riverhead Forest for the newly re-scheduled Riverhead Orienteering Weekend.

Good luck to club members who are heading to Central Otago to compete in the NZ Mountain Bike orienteering champs and South Island foot champs – I suspect Marquita and Rob will return with a few medals between them!

Check out the calendar of events below – there is just about non-stop orienteering throughout Autumn.

Lisa Mead
President NWOC
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1. Events Calendar
2. Riverhead Weekend
3. AKSS Sprint series
4. NZOC2021
5. Orienteering NZ Awards
6. JWOC team selected
7. Rogaine season
8. Club shirts
9.  Low key training dates
10. Coaching resources
11. New member

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1. Events Calendar

April
Sun 18 AOC AOS 5 Turkey Ridge South.  No dogs permitted on this farm map. Pre-entry is not essential but means you can get into action quicker and ensures you will get a map on your preferred course.): https://entero.co.nz/evento.php?eventName=aos5-2021
19-21 NZ Mountain Bike Orienteering Champs, Alexandra (Central Otago)Sat 24 South Island Orienteering Champs (Long Distance)  Earnscleugh Station, Alexandra
Sun 25 South Island Orienteering Champs (Sprint)  Molyneux Park, Alexandra
Mon 26 South Island Orienteering Champs (Middle distance)  Letts Gully West, Alexandra
Entries have closed for the South Island Champs.
29/30 Apr/ 01 May North Island Secondary School Champs  Palmerston North/ Bulls
For all the details visit: nissoc21.orienteering.org.nz. Entries close 16 April.

May
Sun 02 Waikato Rugged Rogaine Papahiwi (75 mins South of Hamilton) 2 or 4 hours. Pre-entry here.
Tue 04 AOC Night streets event 7.00pm. 3/30 Puriri Avenue Greenlane
Thu 06 NWOC Northern zone Year 7/8 school zone day at Long Bay Regional Park. Contact school
             sports coordinators for entry information. Entries close 16 April.
Sat 08 NWOC AOS 1 Riverhead Forest Middle distance
Sun 09 NWOC AOS 2 Riverhead Forest Long distance
            These events comprise ROW- Riverhead Orienteering Weekend and the Northern O League on a new forest map. Pre-entry open now here:
Tue 11 AOC Night streets event 7.00pm. 63 Devore Street, St Heliers
Wed 12 NWOC NW zone Year 7/8 school zone day at Kumeu Showgrounds. Contact school sports coordinators for entry information.
Sun 16 NWOC AOS 6 Turkey Ridge North (New map!)
Tue 18 CMOC Intermediate Schools zone final
Tue 18 AOC Night streets event 7.00pm. 17 Rewa Road, Three Kings
Sun 23 Waikato Rugged Rogaine Te Miro (35 mins East of Hamilton) 2 or 4 hours. Pre-entry here. 
Tue 25 AOC Night streets event 7.00pm. 20 Camwell Cl, Bucklands Beach
Sun 30 CMOC AOS 7 Waiuku Forest North

June
Sat 5 – Mon 7 PAPO Queens Birthday 3 Day weekend. Woodend / Christchurch. Inter-regional Schools Challenge, the NZ Secondary Schools Orienteering Team trials
             (for Australia/ NZ Challenge) and the Canterbury Champs. This will be a pre-entry event.
Sun 13 Waikato Rugged Rogaine Marakopa Heads (70 mins South of Hamilton) 2 or 4 hours.
Tue 15 CMOC  Auckland Secondary Schools rogaine
Sun 20 NWOC Rogaine Barlow Road, Riverhead Forest
Wed 23 AOC Auckland Secondary SchoolsChamps Woodhill Forest

July
Sun 4  Waikato Rugged Rogaine Rapid Stream (70 mins North of Hamilton) 2 or 4 hours. Pre-entry.
Sun 11 NWOC Rogaine Slater Road/ Hedley Dunes, Woodhill Forest

Check out the club website for details of other events in 2021: https://www.nwoc.org.nz/events/
AOS = Auckland Orienteering Series – events generally have 9 courses of varying lengths and difficulty.

2. Riverhead Orienteering Weekend – it’s back!
Pencil 8th and 9^th May into your diaries now – or better still go the EnterO to pre-enter now for the Riverhead Orienteering Weekend (ROW). A brand-new map, produced by Cameron de L’Isle, a specially constructed long track for the easier courses, tricky navigation for the red level courses, all just a short drive from central Auckland. Note the later start for the middle-distance race on Saturday. More information here.

This event is also Round 3 of the National O League series for elite orienteers.

Cameron writes: "World class terrain, only a 10 minute drive from Albany. Low visibility gully spur with areas of subtle detail - this is Riverhead at its best. A lack of tracks lends to epic route choice for the red and orange courses and makes this area particularly special. Special care is taken to also have a yellow and white course available for participants new to orienteering."

3. AKSS Sprint series finals
Straight after Easter, the AKSS schools sprint series, run by Lactic Turkey with lots of NWOC club volunteers, wrapped up for 2021 with a double header final held at AUT Akoranga campus in the morning and at Massey Oteha Rohe campus in Albany in the afternoon. Around 375 students raced on intricate courses, chasing season titles and kudos. The competition was really fierce, so congratulations to the NWOC club members who came in the top 10 overall in their age grade:
Year 12/13 Boys              Alex Tunnicliffe                9^th
Year 12/13 Girls              Meg Collins                      10^th
Year 10/11 Boys              Taiga Kato                         2^nd
Year 9 Girls                       Charli Spence                   3^rd
Year 9 Girls                       Siobhan Murphy             9^th
Year 7 Boys                      Tyler Patuki                      7^th


                  
Cameron reporting on live results                          Some of the 375 participants

4. NZOC2021 – National Orienteering Champs
Months of hard work behind the scenes by many club volunteers, from course planners to  coordinators, IT experts producing start lists, and the teams who put up tents, dug loo holes, managed the starts, collected controls and ran the prize-givings - to name just some of the roles -culminated in a brilliant long weekend of superb orienteering.  Despite worries about Covid levels, everything was flawless, from the courses, maps, venues and the weather.

It is all perfectly summed up in the final NZOC2021 post -Easter newsletter here which has lots of great photos and memories: https://cdn.revolutionise.com.au/cups/nwoc/files/zp49rsmstudzuddu.pdf

Some of the NWOC team still smiling after the relay on Monday.

Congratulations to all our club members who placed in the top 3 following successful racing at Nationals.
Relay
Mixed Open 2^nd                Cameron de LÍsle/ Renee Beveridge/ Daniel Monckton
Mixed Veterans 3^rd         Geoff Mead/ Phillippa Poole/ Dave Middleton
Open Short  2^nd                Alan Janes/ Suzanne Stolberger/ Alex Monckton

5. Orienteering NZ Awards

It was fabulous to see four North West members receive awards at the Orienteering NZ prize-giving held at NZOC2021 over the weekend. Congratulations to:
Marquita Gelderman, recognised as a volunteer for her contribution to all things technical for ONZ.
Gene Beveridge, named Coach of the Year with special recognition of the innovation he has brought to the role with the Leg by Leg coaching video series.
Annemarie Hogenbirk, Administrator of the Year for her tireless work as Secretary of NWOC and organising multiple events (not to mention the 2021 Nationals).
Owen Means - inaugural recipient of the ONZ Innovation Award - recognising his development of the Enter O software that provides an on-line entry facility for orienteering and other events.

Congratulations to you all.

6. JWOC team
The Junior World Orienteering Championships 2021 are scheduled to be held in Turkey but sadly New Zealand will not be sending a team to JWOC this year due to the restrictions and risks around Covid. However, a team (on paper) has been selected. Congratulations to the following NWOC athletes who were selected: Jess Sewell, Cameron Bonar and Liam Stolberger (Jess not pictured).

7. Rogaine season
May heralds the start of the rogaine season with 4 events offered by Waikato Orienteering Club for those who are happy to travel further afield and 2 of the popular NWOC rogaines in June and July.

ROGAINE: Rugged Outdoor Group Activity Involving Navigation and Endurance

If you are not familiar with rogaines then they can perhaps be described as a more social version of orienteering, usually comprising teams of 2-4 people aiming to visit as many checkpoints (in any order) in a set period of time. All competitors start at the same time and must finish within the designated time or face losing points for lateness.
The 90-minute NWOC rogaines are suitable for everyone from children, families, groups of friends, to elite athletes, and can be run either in teams or individually – 20 June and 11 July - more details next month.

 The Orienteering Waikato Rugged Rogaine series is back again with four exciting events coming up over the next few months! These are a fun way to explore the beautiful Waikato countryside, experience an adventure sport, practice map reading and navigation, and improve your fitness.

What: Four rogaine events with both a 2 hr and 4 hr option. The control points will vary so it is important to spend a bit of time planning a route. If you're late back points will be deducted for every minute you're over the cut-off time. The two hour race can be done solo but the 4 hour race must be done as a team (2-5 people, Men/Women/Mixed/Junior).

Details can be found here: http://orienteeringwaikato.org.nz/events/1801-2/  (Pre-entry required).
 

8. NWOC club shirts by Trimtex
North West has a cool, distinctive club shirt, which featured prominently on the podium at the National Champs at Easter. We have very few shirts left in stock and plan to order new Trimtex shirts in the same NWOC club design from Grassy Knoll Outdoor (GKO). Gene Beveridge has advised that Trimtex offer several different models of O-shirts, including the Trail O-shirt and the Rapid O-shirt as well as a basic all mesh design.

The club committee feels that the Rapid O-Shirt ($79 in NWOC colours) is a great value option for the club with a short zip and mesh back providing great ventilation for the humid Auckland climate. It comes in male and female cuts.
Check out the website here: https://www.grassyknoll.co.nz/orienteering/rapid-o-shirt-black-white-red?gn=Orienteering&gp=3
Sizing: https://www.grassyknoll.co.nz/sizing

Gene is also offering a 5% discount on all products on his website when ordered with the club's bulk order.
Please contact me/ Lisa (mead10b@gmail.com) to order a shirt (include whether Mens/ Womens and size) by 15 May so that we can place a bulk order.

     

9.  Woodhill Forest orienteering training
In response to members’ wishes for better training opportunities, we were pleased to announce last year that we had reached an agreement with the Woodhill forest owners for improved access to the forest for training.  This will continue in 2021.
The latest Woodhill Forest access agreement between the forest owners Nga Maunga Whakahii O Kaipara Ngahere Limited and NWOC/AOC provides for access to the forest for orienteering training on a number of specified days (about 1 per month). The training activity access is:

• For small groups – initially it is envisaged no more than 20 people on any given day.
• Requires a permit. Each training day needs a person in charge to apply for the permit, to notify forest management of the number of people, entry time to forest and when all people have exited the forest.
• Has a fee of $5 per person.
• Is for blocks of forest that don’t require a gate key for forest access.
• Participants must be AOC or NWOC club members.

The objective of gaining the training access to Woodhill is to improve the opportunities for members to be able to train on quality orienteering terrain. This will typically be self-directed training, the participants are likely to have their own structured training plan focused on a significant orienteering goal (eg WOC selection, JWOC selection, Australia Schools challenge section, etc). We appreciate that these goals have been impacted by COVID 19.

The training days are not targeted at large scale formal orienteering coaching sessions with coaches and prepared coaching activities at different levels of orienteering skill. The training day forest access however could be used by small groups with their own coach (eg a school team, ONZ elite and development squads).

If you have an interest in using this forest access to develop your own orienteering skills, register your interest and we will see what we can do. We would like to thank Nga Maunga Whakahii o Kaipara Ngahere Limited for their willingness to continue this access arrangement.

Cameron de LÍsle is the contact person for NWOC members interested in the training access.
Cameron: 0212021359 or email Camerondelisle@gmail.com
Future training dates: 17 April/ 08 May/ 13 and 27 June/ 17 July/ 08 and 21 August/ 4 September.

Forest Access – please stick to the rules
Most of our orienteering events take place on private land. North West Orienteering Club does not support or condone any access to private land outside of organised orienteering events, unless the access has been authorised in advance by the land owner. Possession of an orienteering map from a previous event does not imply approval for future access.

Access to the areas in which we orienteer, such as Woodhill Forest, is usually subject to the club meeting special conditions, regarding safety or payment of access fees; sometimes landowners have moved stock to accommodate us or have concerns about some areas (spread of kauri dieback disease). Please ensure that we maintain our good relationships with land owners.

10.  Coaching Resources
 Don’t forget to check out the Coaching Framework here for tips and training for orienteers at all skill levels before your next AOS event.

11. New member
Welcome to new club member Tyler Patuki. We look forward to catching up with you in the forest soon!