NWOC newsletter September 2021

Greetings North West members

Here we go again! After a bit of a break from orienteering in Auckland it was great to get back into Woodhill Forest in mid-August with lots of club members making the most of the quite physical but interesting courses on offer at the Mushroom Road AOS. A number of newer club members hooked up with some of our more experienced orienteers for coaching and tips during a map walk on a snippet of the map prior to the event. We plan to have pre-event coaching for members at future forest events.

Just in the nick of time too, as New Zealand was once again thrown into Level 4 lockdown just a couple of days later.

Unfortunately, this latest lockdown has caused havoc with the events calendar and while we hope to reschedule as many events as possible, at this stage we cannot make plans until we have some clarity on when we will be back in level 1 (or at least level 2 for some smaller events).
Keep an eye on the club website as we will update the events list as new dates are finalised.
Now, more than ever with the Delta variant, it is important that clubs maintain records of all participants at events, so please help us by pre-entering online wherever possible.

The dates for Junior camp have been pushed back a few days to 15-20 December and registrations are now open until the end of September – see more information below.

Instead of actual orienteering I’ve been cleaning out the black hole that is the cupboard under the stairs and amongst old school projects I have unearthed multiple boxes of maps and troves of orienteering memorabilia collected since last century…. much to be thrown out, but I’ve shared a few blasts from the past.

Let’s hope we are out of this latest lockdown soon.

Kia kaha

Lisa Mead
President NWOC

**********************************************************************************

1. Events Calendar - provisional
2. Junior Camp Registrations now open
3. From the Archives
4. Online orienteering & training
5. NWOC club Champs

**********************************************************************************

1.Events Calendar
August
Sun 29 NWOC AOS 10 Hedley Dunes. POSTPONED. We hope to reschedule at a later date.

September
Wed 08 AOC Night Street event (MapRun6) 47 Harlston Rd, Mt Albert   POSTPONED under Level 4/3
Event uses MapRun6. Details can be found here: https://orienteeringauckland.org.nz/events/night-street-series/
Sun 12 CMOC Auckland Inter Club relays at Botanical Gardens. POSTPONED
FREE entry to all club members running for a NWOC team. We need orienteers of all ages -especially juniors!
Mon 13 Lactic Turkey AKL Schools Relays, Ambury Regional Park CANCELLED
Wed 15 AOC Night Street event (MapRun6): 15Wright Road, Point Chev – see above
Sun 19 AOC AOS 11 Grass Track Road, Muriwai   POSTPONED
(New map used once for the 2021 Auckland Secondary School Champs). This event will be the NWOC Club Champs.
Wed 22 AOC Night Street event (MapRun6): 10 Brilliant St, St Heliers – see above

Register for Junior Orienteering Training Camp (15-20 December 2021 – note new dates) - Student registrations for camp are open between September 1st and 30th 2021 and a link appears in the August issue of Compass Point, the Orienteering NZ newsletter. Information here.

October
Sun 17 NWOC AOS Lake Kereta – date to be confirmed, pending on Covid alert level.
Labour Weekend: 23-25 October: Tuaraki Northern Region orienteering Champs
Sat 23 Middle distance Whakaroa, Taupo
Sun 24 (Morning) Sprint, Taupo
Sun 24 (4.00pm) Harris Interclub rogaine event, Tihiotonga Centennial Park, Rotorua.
Mon 25 Long distance Okere Falls (SHY 33, near Rotorua)
Recommended to book accommodation soon. Event details: https://www.obop.org.nz/north-regional-champs.html

Thu 28  AOC SummerNav Cornwall park (Provisional)

November
Thu 04  AOC SummerNav  Hamlins Hill, Gt South Road  5.30pm
Wed 10 AOC SummerNav  Auckland Domain, Titoki Road  5.30pm
Wed 17 AOC SummerNav  Waiatarua Reserve 5.30pm
Sun 21 CMOC AOS 9 Waiuku Forest South             NEW DATE (originally 22 August)
Tue 23   AOC SummerNav  Western Springs, Zoo carpark
Sun 28  NWOC Club dinner, prizegiving and AGM
Tue 30   AOC SummerNav  Ambury Regional Park

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. Junior Camp Registrations are now open
Change of date
The recent move by NZQA to move back NCEA examinations has forced ONZ to move both the Junior and U23 Camp dates.  The Junior Camp, hosted in the Wellington/ Palmerston North region, will now take place between Wed 15th and Mon 20th December.

Because there is no limit on the number of participants able to attend the camp, there are two very different options on how the camp will run. These options are based on attendance numbers. For this reason, we ask parents to not book travel for the camp until numbers are confirmed.
Ninety or fewer participants
The camp will follow the format or past years if the camp has ninety or fewer participants. This will mean the camp will run between Wednesday 15th and finish and Monday 20th December.
More than ninety participants
The maximum participants (excluding parents and staff) that can be accommodated at any time is ninety. If this number is exceeded, the camp will be split into two camps divided by participant school year levels. This would mean two camps of between 2 ½ and 3 days each. To make this option work, participants will all have to all be at the camp by a set time.

Junior camp has always been a great experience for young orienteers – you’ll make new friends from all around the country while honing your orienteering skills and techniques.
Full details about the camp can be found here.
Registrations for the Junior Camp are open now until 30 September – the form is here.

The Under 23 camp
With NCEA examinations being pushed back 2 weeks as a result of the lockdown, the dates of the Under 23 Camp have been moved back by 4 days. The camp will now run from Wednesday 8 December until Tuesday 14 December. The location remains Palmerston North. As it is still assumed that Oceania 2022 will go ahead and that it is of importance with regard to qualification both for individual WOC places and for team entry to the World Games, given the shift from mid-week to mid-week, the weekend of 11/12 December will now be open to other elites and will largely be focussed on sprint training. Applications for the under 23 Camp will open shortly on the ONZ website.

3. From the NWOC archives
Level 4 lockdown is a time for Spring-cleaning and the many boxes of orienteering memorabilia crammed under our stairs are probably a fire hazard.  While we can’t bear to throw out thousands of maps (we started orienteering in the 1980’s), it was time to consign certificates and copies of event programmes to the recycling bin – but not before they brough back a few memories.

Back in the day, when sending a letter by NZ Post didn’t require a mortgage and not many people had home computers and fewer still had internet, clubs posted out monthly newsletters to all members.  I recall writing as NorthWest Newshound and putting my article on a floppy disk which I snail-mailed to the then Auckland Orienteering Association newsletter editor.
The newsletters contained entry forms for major events, which had to be filled in and posted back to the event organizers, complete with a cheque in payment. Participants would then receive, by post, a hard copy of the event bulletin and usually a printed results booklet a couple of weeks post-event.  By the time of the Queen’s Birthday Weekend event in 2000, things were starting to change. Former club member Keith Stone handled entries and results. He had this to say in the results bulletin:
Of the 102 entry forms received, 73 showed email addresses (138 out of 172 entries). With such a large proportion on orienteers with access to the Internet perhaps it is time we stopped sending our programmes and results booklets for events and just published the information in the Internet. How would the other 34 people get the information? Is the small cost (the programmes cost $1.50 each to copy and post) worth worrying about? I would appreciate feedback on these questions.
The Internet is a great medium for displaying results quickly. On day 3 the final results were on my website at 6.00pm, 3 ½ hours after the last finisher crossed the line.

Orienteering venues and maps come and go as plantation forests are harvested and replanted, land changes ownership or is developed for housing. One of the earliest events I competed on was at Weiti Station, just north of the Okura River – this is now being developed as an upmarket gated community. The map was mostly pine forest but with 10% intricate native bush, areas of tangled supplejack vines and gullies filled with pongas. Originally the access road went right down to the beach, but later became impassable with slips. Today there is a tarseal road, although public driving access stops before the beach.

There was a bit of a theme with naming maps in the late 1990’s – we had Wounded Knee and Knobbly Kneez, both in the Kaipara Knolls region of northern Woodhill Forest, as well as Beez Kneez at Weiti. These names came about after Marquita Gelderman’s ghastly accident, sustaining serious knee and leg injuries during a competition - requiring helicopter evacuation.  During her recuperation  period she honed her map drawing and cartography skills.   Fortunately, the accident did not stop her from recovering to become one of our top orienteers and MTBO riders.

 The Woodcocks map had a railway line through the middle of it (H&S nightmare nowadays) and it is many years since we have orienteered at Ahuroa, Auahine Topu and Mt Auckland. In 1995 we orienteered at lovely Phoebes Lake on the Poutu Peninsula, south of Dargaville. A contingent of orienteers chartered a boat across the Kaipara harbour to the Poutu Peninsula and arrived very late and very green around the gills.

In March 1992 we held the inaugural Great Day-O, an endurance long-distance event combining courses on 5 different maps, with some driving between the venues. There were over 70 entries, with the first mass start at 8.00am and controls uplifted from the final map at 6.30pm. The first map was Otakanini Topu (Woodhill Forest) – thence to Mt Auckland, Woodcocks, Waterfalls and finally the Waiwera map for a Sprint O finish.

The Waterfalls map near Moirs Hill was notoriously steep, greenish in places and like a mudslide in winter.
The Great Day O appealed to a certain type of slightly masochistic orienteer and there were two further versions in 1995 (Pulpit Rock in Woodhill – Muriwai – Ngapuketurua – Pulpit Rock with Rob Garden as chief course-setter) and finally in June 2001, a slightly shorter version of either 23.5km or 15.7km. In 2001 Mark Lawson won the open men’s course in 2 hours 36 minutes, with a youthful Shaun Collins in 3^rd place in 2 hours 54 mins.  Most of those competing in 2001 are still keen orienteers today.

Having been part of the organising team for the NZ Champs (NZOC2021) this year I shudder to think how NWOC coped when we organised the 2005 Oceania Orienteering Carnival with 8 events (plus a sprint organised by the JWOC team) over 10 days with venues from Woodhill Forest to Stillwater East and Weiti as well as an MTB orienteering challenge in Riverhead Forest. 

Finally, from the results booklet for the 1998 Central orienteering Champs held by the then Rotorua Orienteering Club (now OBOP), a quote from course planner Mark McKenna:
In its best moments orienteering racing is like surfing.  Where a surfer rides the waves you the orienteer rides the land using the map as your vehicle.  You become so attuned to the map and terrain that it is as if the controls are drawing you to them and the running is effortless.  At these times you are absolutely at one with the world. One day I’m going to run a whole race that way.

Location of some of the Northern region maps - 2003

4. Online coaching/ Nav Chat
We can’t be in the forest right now, but you can learn a lot by tuning into Nav Chat with Gene Beveridge and Tom Reynolds and also by checking out some of the resources in the ONZ Orienteering Coaching Framework and the Schools Knowledge Hub.

Nav Chat # 10. Gene: This month Tom and I focus on difficulty, where it comes from and how to spot it before you make a mistake. We hear from Toby Scott after some very challenging World Cup races in Sweden and discuss the surprisingly hard controls that caused some big mistakes. We also look at some training ideas to help prepare you for different kinds of difficulty: https://genebeveridge.nz/podcast/nav-chat-10/

 ONZ has added to the coaching resources for schools, parents, teachers and coaches in the Schools Knowledge Hub (https://www.orienteering.org.nz/resources/schools/ ) and under Resources on the ONZ website.  Gene has put together some excellent YouTube videos. Click here for an introduction to orienteering maps and interpretation.

This video focusses on map memory. Watch it here.

5. NWOC Club Champs
Trophies are up for grabs in the 2021 NWOC club champs which we hope will be held in conjunction with the AOS event on Grass Track Road in Woodhill Forest -a new date  is yet to be confirmed. The table below shows the grade/ course you should compete in to be eligible for a club trophy. Please keep an eye on the NWOC website for further event details in due course.

Please can you bring your 2020 trophies along to the next NWOC club event – we will have a box at registration to collect these. 

General
Our smart new Trimtex club orienteering shirts have arrived and we will have these available for purchase ($79) at upcoming events.