News

February 2025 News

Published Wed 05 Feb 2025

President’s introduction

Kia ora all. Welcome to a new season and congrats to everyone who raced at Oceania! I'm personally amped after Oceania and really keen to make progress this season on my own orienteering and on the competencies in the club. I hope you will join me to work on your orienteering and other things like computer skills and course setting at our upcoming training events and club nights.

Newsletter Contents

Auckland Calendar of Events and first events for 2025
Club Nights - new
NWOC Members Training Opportunity
Key events coming up around New Zealand in 2025
- Katoa Po
- NZ Champs
Schools Orienteering
- AKSS Sprint Series
North West's Bivouac Outdoor Rogaine Series 2025
Trailblaze
Member News
- We need your help please
- Club Membership Fees are now due
- New Member

Auckland Calendar of Events

For the first three months of 2025, we are in the early aeason phase of the Auckland Events Calendar. This is when school events start and club orienteers are getting themselves ready for NZ Champs to be held over Easter.

First up for 2025, to help you get your head back into orienteering, is a Sprint event on Sunday 2 March.

Venue: AUT North Akoranga Campus
Start times between 10.00am and 12.00 noon
3 courses
Event details and entry info here
Standard entries close 11:59pm on Wednesday 26 February 2025, Late entries on Thursday 27 February. There will be a limited number of maps available for on the day entries.

The first forest events for 2025 will be held in March as below:

Sunday 16 March, hosted by Counties Manukau Club.
Sunday 23 March, hosted by Auckland Club
Sunday 30 March, hosted by North West Club.

Event details will be posted here as soon as they are available. Pre-entry will be preferred and will be live on enterO here

Club Nights

Gene Beveridge will be leading a series of club nights open to all members and non members. We expect these to be well attended by AOC and NWOC members. Each club night will have a main topic.

26 February - Basic sprint course setting: How to easily set interesting sprint courses.
13 March - Forest course setting: How to think about setting interesting forest and farm courses.
26 March - OCAD basics: Get familiar with the OCAD interface, different file types and basic drawing and editing.

The first club night will be 6:30 to 8:30 in Epsom; more information will follow.

Forest Training Opportunity for North West Members

North West Club is hosting a forest training event for Club members on Saturday 22 February. This provides a great opportunity to get some practice in ahead of the start of the forest events. See details below.

The event is targeted at Yellow and Orange level orienteers who want to improve their forest orienteering skills. Red level orienteers are also welcome, to help with the training and/or to get their brains into forest orienteering mode.
We will have control sites marked with flags in the forest and experienced club members will lead small groups on a "map walk", focusing on building peoples map reading and interpretation skills. We are using the flatter and "white bits" of the forest, so the morning shouldn't be a physical challenge (who loves the Riverhead jungle, mud and hills?).
The plan:
- Saturday 22 February, 10am meet at the parking area at the junction of Barlow and Ararimu Valley Roads.
- BYO a compass, shoes with good grips, water/snacks and A4 plastic map bag if you have one
- NWOC will supply the map. We will also bring some spare compassses.
- We should be finished by noon.
- Free for NWOC members.
- Sign up here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nT7yA7wskHH6yV8QQefNdc843w45H_bDpFXQS2bqvEs/edit?usp=sharing
- sign up is needed for map printing.
Homework before the training day:
- Spend some time reviewing the sections relevant to your orienteering level on https://www.orienteering.org.nz/coaching-and-training-hub/

Lisa Mead beside a rock that has been cleared in preparation for the training day in Riverhead!

Other Auckland events

All upcoming events in the wider Auckland area for 2025 will be added to our NWOC website here
New Zealand wide events are on Orienteering New Zealand’s website here

Key events coming up around NZ

Katoa Po - Saturday 8 & Sunday 9 March, 2025

Katoa Po, or night relays, provides a unique weekend of orienteering. This year is the 45th Katoa Po! The night relay format has been revised, with just a single category of five person club teams, and the eligibility criteria for each leg has been loosened, to make for more exciting racing. The explorer rogaine for teams of 2 to 5 will run from 8:30 to 11:30 pm, covering a similar but larger area. The night relay will start at dusk, and the explorer rogaine shortly after, and run into the night. The relay is appropriate to all levels of skills and fitness and is ideal for keen school teams to test their navigation skills, ahead of events like the Hillary Challenge and/or the Secondary Schools Adventure Racing Champs (SISSARC).

Dates: 8 -9 March 2025
Details: here

North West invites members of all abilities to make up our club teams - see below for specifics about the course level for each leg.

Gene Beveridge is coordinating our North West teams - if you're interested in being in a team, please email gene.beveridge@gmail.com

New Zealand Orienteering Champs 2025

Nationals 2025 will be held in Canterbury over Easter weekend, Friday 18 to Monday 21 April and will include 4 events (Sprint, Middle, Long, Relay), one each day. The NZOC website has all the information on Nationals 2025.

Schools Orienteering

AKSS Sprint Series - starting very soon!

AKSS Sprint events start 17 February. This series for years 7-13, run by Lactic Turkey Events, with sport ident equipment and support provided by North West is a great way for students to get into orienteering. The series runs from 17 February to 27 March and the programme is available now on the Auckland Schools Orienteering website here.

For more information email info@schoolsorienteering.co.nz and/or talk with your School Orienteering Sport Coordinator. You can also follow Auckland Schools' Orienteering on Facebook here.

North West's Bivouac Outdoor Rogaine Series 2025

Back again for 2025 is our annual North West Bivouac Outdoor Rogaine Series. Three 90 minute Foot Rogaine Events will be held on:

Sunday 18 May, Riverhead Forest
Sunday 25 May, Hucks Avenue, Woodhill Forest
Sunday 8 June, Grass Track Road, Woodhill Forest

All event info will be posted on our North West website here

Trailblaze

Trailblaze NZ, is now owned by orienteer Callum Wishart. If you're in need of a new Sport Ident or other orienteering equipment take a look here

Member News

We need your help with our 2025 events please

With several events being hosted by North West in 2025, we need and value help from all Club members. There's a variety of jobs to do; some pre-event activities that might involve admin work from home as well as on-the-day assistance with everything from pitching tents to running the sport ident technology (to ensure we have results for events) or control collection at the end of an event. All those who help are awarded a voucher for discounted or free entry to another NWOC-organised event. If you're happy to help please contact us at northwestorienteering@gmail.com

North West Member Results from Oceania Champs 2025

Lots of our members were in action at the recent Oceania Champs. It was espiecally good to see some of our newer members competing. Congratulations to all those with podium placings as below.

Grade	Sprint	Middle	Long	Relay
W21E			Renee Beveridge 3rd	Renee Beveridge 1st
W10	Lauren Harris 2nd
M14		Aidan Barrett-Hamilton 2nd	Alexander Finn 4th
M16		Tahi Harris 2nd	Tahi Harris 3rd	Tahi Harris 1st
M50A		Nick Harris 3rd
W55A	Marquita Gelderman 2nd	Marquita Gelderman 4th	Marquita Gelderman 2nd	Marquita Gelderman 1st
M60A	Andrew de L’Isle 2nd	Andrew de L’Isle 3rd
M65A				Dave Middleton 2nd
				Geoff Mead 3rd
W65A	Phillippa Poole 2nd		Phillippa Poole 2nd	Phillippa Poole 3rd
M75A	Dave Middleton 2nd	Rob Garden 2nd	Rob Garden 1st	Rob Garden 1st
			Dave Middleton 2nd
Open B				Alexander Finn 2nd
				Aidan Barrett-Hamilton 2nd
				Amelie Finn 2nd
M/W10N	Elodie Finn 1^st	Elodie Finn 1st

Photos above

Left - shows Renee Beveridge (centre) as a member of the NZW21E Relay Team that placed first.
Right - Aidan Barrett-Hamilton & Alexander Finn in the OpenB relay team that placed 2nd.

North West Membership Fees for 2025 are due now

NWOC membership fees remain unchanged for 2025 and are due NOW please. Thanks to those who have paid already.

Category	Membership Fee 2025
Senior	$50
Junior/Unwaged	$20
Family/Couple	$90

And as in the last couple of years, we are again offering a combined deal of club membership/rogaine entry fee that offers good savings for those who love our rogaine series. (We have 3 rogaines planned for 2025.) The combo deal means you effectively get free entry to one rogaine – plus all the benefits of club membership.

Category	Rogaine per event; Club Members	Rogaine per event; Non Club Members	NWOC membership & 3 rogaine entry combo deal
Senior	$25	$35	$100
Junior	$10	$15	$40
Family	NA	NA	$220

To ensure you get members’ rates at all orienteering events, please pay your fee as soon as possible.

Existing members can simply credit NWOC's club bank account (WESTPAC Account 03-0243-0247251-000 and include your name in the reference field.) No need to log in or re-register. Those selecting the membership/rogaine combo deal will receive a credit voucher before the start of the rogaine series.