NWOC newsletter June 2021

It is officially Winter but that’s no excuse for retreating indoors when there are still lots of quality orienteering events over the coming months – not least, the first of our ever-popular Rogaines on 20 June. Bring along your friends and family for a fun day!

May saw an intense burst of NWOC events, including the Riverhead weekend (see ONZ High Performance News for a review of the elite courses), an AOS at Turkey Ridge and two Year 7/8 orienteering Have a Go days with a total of 658 students participating, all within the space of 9 days.  Especial thanks to Annemarie for coordinating the use of all the SportIdent equipment and sorting the many, many hire Ident cards for the Have a Go days.
A big thank you also to all the volunteers who made sure these events ran smoothly, from setters and controllers, coordinators, coaches (A to Z of how to orienteer in 5 minutes – repeat about 50 times per zone day!), control collectors, registration teams, wildlife rescuers….

We would like to grow our pool of volunteers who are confident with the O-Lynx/ SportIdent timing side of events. You don’t have to be an IT guru – come along to our training session on Saturday 26 June to learn the basics or take it a step further and learn how to be part of the network crew.

We are also planning a forest training day – keep an eye on club newsletters and Facebook for updates.

Happy orienteering!

Lisa Mead
President NWOC

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1. Events Calendar
2. O-Lynx Timing Training
3. Turkey Ridge AOS event
4. Queen’s Birthday 2021 & Inter-regional school challenge
5. Rogaine season
6. Member profile – Jonine Fuss
7. Training & Navchat
8. Low-key training days
9. New members

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1. Events Calendar

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.
Sun 13 Waikato Rugged Rogaine Marakopa Heads (70 mins South of Hamilton) 2 or 4 hours.
un 13  Lactic Turkey TrailNav teams rogaine - Muriwai
Tue 15 CMOC  Auckland Secondary Schools rogaine at Totara Park
Sun 20 NWOC Rogaine Barlow Road, Riverhead Forest
Wed 23 AOC Auckland Secondary Schools Champs Woodhill Forest  - also open to Year 7 & 8 students with some experience. See https://orienteeringauckland.org.nz/ Coming Events for details and entry form. Entries close 18 June.
Sat 26   AOC Winter Sprint Macleans College 4.00pm
July
Sat 03   AOC Winter Sprint Epsom Campus   4.00pm
Sun 04 Whangarei O Club Flyger Road
Sun 4  Waikato Rugged Rogaine Rapid Stream (70 mins North of Hamilton) 2 or 4 hours. Pre-entry: https://entero.co.nz/evento.php?eventName=rr-2021
Sun 04 Lactic Turkey TrailNav teams rogaine- Waitawa Regional Park
Sun 11 NWOC Rogaine Slater Road/ Hedley Dunes, Woodhill Forest
             Check out the website – entries now open: https://entero.co.nz/evento.php?eventName=rogaine-2021.
Fri 23- Sun 25 NZ Secondary School Champs in Hawkes Bay. Find all the information here:
http://www.hborienteering.com/club/index.php?page=nzssc2021
Sat 31 OBOP Great Forest Rogaine Rotorua (3 and 6 hour Foot and MTBO options). Pre-entry: https://entero.co.nz/evento.php?eventName=gfr-2021

August
Sun 08 Lactic Turkey TrailNav teams rogaine - Riverhead
Sun 15 AOC  AOS 8 Mushroom Road (Woodhill Forest)
Sun 22 CMOC AOS 9 Waiuku Forest South
Sun 29 NWOC AOS 10 Hedley Dunes

Labour Weekend: 23-25 October – save the dates: Tuaraki Northern Region orienteering Champs Taupo/Rotorua. Recommended to book accommodation soon.

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.O-Lynx Timing Training 26 June
Great orienteering events like the AOS-series, the recent Riverhead Weekend or the Nationals could not happen without our amazing volunteer-member pool. There are experienced setters of courses, and controllers of courses, but also volunteers who collect money on the day who make sure all participants have a SportIdent card and know about ‘Clear/Check’, volunteers at the start or those who help to pack up afterwards.

NWOC has planned a double training session for volunteers helping with the electronic timing using O-Lynx, to enlarge the pool of volunteers with these skills:

When:                Saturday morning 26 June 2021

Where:               Harbour Sport building, next to North Harbour Stadium, Albany, North Shore

Time:                   9.00 – ± 10.30: training ‘timing volunteer’ directly followed by

                             ± 10.30 – 12.00: training for the ‘network crew’

Timing volunteer:

You might be one of the volunteers we are looking for as ‘timing volunteer’, taught in the first part of the training session.  The only skill required is the ability to work with a computer. If you can use MS Word or are able to do online banking, you can help with the electronic timing software during an event – it is definitely not rocket science. You will receive a hands-on training to solve the most common requests during an event like:

• Add a participant to the event;
• Change a SI-card number for a participant;
• Change a course for a participant, for example somebody who enrolled for a Yellow course but is confident he/she is able to do an Orange course;
• Register a participant for a second course who has successfully finished a course already;
• Change the paper in the split-printer when the roll runs out;
• Print the results of the day using a standard report function and
• Perform a quick check how many participants are still out on the course.

Network crew:

The second part of the course is for those members who are interested in setting up the computer network, the radio controls, and the television displays at the start of an event, and breaking it all down / packing up after an event: the network crew. In other words, people who would like to learn how the hardware is connected and how to make sure all computers communicate with the master computer and the event database. Although not necessary, a basic understanding of computer networks is a plus.

Helping at events:

We are aware that the best way to learn these skills is to do it ‘for real’ several times during events to gain experience and confidence, with somebody available to help out if you get stuck. In addition, rest assured taking part in this training does not mean that we expect you to come to all events and help every time…

Interested? Please contact Annemarie via northwestorienteering@gmail.com to register for the first or both sessions. We look forward to hearing from you!

3.Turkey Ridge North – AOS event report 16 May
In March 2020 North West was all set to host the JWOC ( Junior World Champs) team trials on a new map, Turkey Ridge North.  The controls were all out in the terrain and metres and metres of tape had been rolled across hillsides for the white courses when Covid 19 raised its ugly head and New Zealand prepared to enter its first lockdown, prompting the cancellation of the weekend.

Finally, on May 16^th 2021 we got to experience all Turkey Ridge North has to offer - stunning views out to the Tasman Ocean, areas of complex sand dune contour detail with kanuka/native bush coverage and a section of mature white plantation forest, mixing areas of fast running open terrain with intricate, tight control picking.
It was a bluebird day with good numbers and many newcomers chose to run both the white and yellow courses, while red level orienteers appreciated the navigation challenges. Drama on the day included a report of a calf entangled in a fence close to a white course control.  Our friendly club vet, Marquita, was all set to mount a rescue/mercy mission only to discover that the “calf” was in fact a deer - and had already been freed by another club member, Mark.

Big thanks to landowners Otakanini Topu, whose ancestral occupation of the land goes back centuries (read more here) and to all those volunteers who made the day run smoothly.


Photos Annemarie Hogenbirk & Jan Jager

  4. Queen’s Birthday 2021 (Christchurch, hosted by PAPO)
    NZSS team trials and Inter-Regional Schools Challenge

The Queen’s Birthday 3-day carnival has become a major fixture on the orienteering calendar for keen school-age orienteers as it is the main trial for selection to the NZ Secondary Schools team (which will contest the Southern Cross Challenge in Australia in late September).

Every year there is also an Inter-Regional Schools Challenge at the Queen’s Birthday event, aimed to foster competition between school kids from different regions around NZ. At the events there will be a team atmosphere promoted by having a shelter tent(s) for kids to gather together at, and coaches available to help with organisation, tips and feedback.

Good luck to all the NWOC club members heading South for the weekend, including Auckland Schools team members Rosie Monckton and Sienna Payne.

5. Rogaine season

Our fun and social 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.
Everyone loves rogaines: you choose how far or not so far you want to run in the given timeframe; careful planning and strategy can pay dividends for crafty orienteers -  or simply make it a chance to explore new terrain.
Be one of the first 50 people to enter and you go in to the draw to win an Osprey backpack from Bivouac Outdoors.

Our first rogaine is at Barlow Road, Riverhead Forest, on an extended map, newly field-worked by Paul Ireland.   Have a look here for Geoff’s hints on rogaine planning – written in 2017 but still relevant. Gene Beveridge has done some excellent Leg by Leg Youtube videos on rogaines, including from our 2020 rogaine series here.
Check out the NWOC rogaine website here.

Waikato Rugged Rogaines: 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:  (Pre-entry required).

Lactic Turkey also have a series of three TrailNav rogaines for teams of 2-5 runners: https://www.lacticturkey.co.nz/rogaines/

6. Interview with NWOC club member Jonine Fuss

I recall Jonine and her twin sister Michelle from when she was a talented young orienteer in the late nineties and early 2000’s. It is great to have her re-join NWOC and to prove that you never forget how to orienteer.

Jonine went to school on the North Shore and recently returned to New Zealand after about a decade spent overseas, and now lives in Albany/Coatesville, very handy for orienteering.

Q. Number of years orienteering?
A. 8 years as a teenager, then restarted again this year.

Q. How were you introduced to orienteering?
A. The legendary Graham Peters (Head of Sports at Birkenhead College for many years) approached my sister and I after cross country success at Intermediate school, and encouraged us to attend Birkenhead College where we started the sport.

Q. Key orienteering achievements to date?
A. JWOC 1998, Reims, France.
Note: Jonine’s twin sister was also a member of the JWOC team. 1998 was the year that the famous French orienteer, Thierry Gueorgiou, first came to prominence with a silver medal in the Classic race.

Age group victories; NZ Champs 2005 (21A), ANZ Challenge/Oceania Champs 2005, Auckland Champs 2004, NZ Champs 1998.

Q. Current orienteering project or goal?
A. Return to form and return to fitness!

Q. Favourite map and why?
A. Riverhead forest, but I might be biased as it’s my local forest!
I enjoyed the challenge of limited visibility, which the native pockets within the pine provided.

Q. Orienteering heroes?
A. Graham Peters. His commitment (among others around the country) to junior development.

Q. Day job?
A. Osteopath

Q. Other interests?
A. Maintaining our QEII sponsored covenant. A real ‘life-sentence‘ block.
 

7.  Training & Navchat

April’s episode of Navchat, hosted by Gene Beveridge and Thomas Reynolds features club members Daniel Monckton and Jan Jager as they talk about what goes on behind the scenes technology-wise at a major event like the National Champs, running the SPORTident and O-Lynx systems for live results at the finish and live splits from radio controls mid-course. https://genebeveridge.nz/podcast/nav-chat-6/

In May, they talk with Jean Cory-Wright, who had a major influence on the Coaching Resource Framework .  The sample below is from Red level coaching.

8.  Woodhill Forest low-key orienteering training reminder
A reminder that Auckland and North West clubs have negotiated an agreement with the Woodhill Forest owners, Nga Maunga Whakahii O Kaipara Ngahere Limited, for improved access to the forest for training.   The clubs pay the access fees. Generally, the training is self-directed and targeted at competent orienteers - there will not be actual control flags in the terrain.

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.
• 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, most 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).
However, there is scope for other, reasonably fit orienteers to join the group or form their own training session in consultation with the group.

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.

If you have an interest in using this forest access to develop your own orienteering skills, contact:
Cameron de L’Isle for NWOC members interested in the training access.
Cameron: 021 08252070 or email camerondelisle@gmail.com
Future training dates: 13 and 27 June/ 17 July/ 08 and 21 August/ 4 September.

9. New Members
A warm welcome to Jerry Lu and Chase Templeton from Pinehurst School and to the Behse family of Alex, Joanne, Lukas and Maya of Kumeu.