For Juniors For Juniors by Juniors
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Post: Judith Holt, 5 Pembroke Close, Tamworth B79 7YB
British Schools Orienteering Championships, Dorset
On Sunday 18th November eight orienteers from my school, Lawrence Sheriff in Rugby, ran at the British Schools Orienteering Championships near Bovington, Dorset. About 100 schools attended from around the country with over 700 runners.After an early start, meeting at school at 7am in the dark, cold, and pouring rain, we finally arrived four hours later at 11am - when it was still belting down! This late arrival meant that some of us missed our start times, but the organisers were very accommodating and reallocated starts so that we could start a bit later.
The downpour just didn't stop, so a couple of hours later after doing our courses, everyone was drenched! However, the rain did not stop the runners doing well, and although we did not gain top positions, we got good results considering the weather and that for almost everyone this was only their 2nd or 3rd time orienteering. And I have to say that I have never appreciated Wilf's more!
The terrain was partly a tank training area and mostly forest, so we came across a couple of old tanks in the forest and had to run across large sandy army training grounds. Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to visit monkey world which was just a mile down the road.
Our team consisted of five year 9s (M13/14), one 11 (M15/16), one 12 (myself, M16/17) and one year 13 (M17/18). Our year 9s are all new to the sport since I introduced it to them in only in April this year, and despite the lack of experience, there was no mispunching, and we secured 32nd, 33rd, 37th, 42nd and 43rd for the boys' year 9 course. This put us 5th as a school out of 8 schools who had at least 3 runners to count for this age class.
Alex Nottingham, a new member of LEI since the Ratby National Forest event (a good example that it worked!), was set to finish 34th out of 44, but unfortunately his time did not count due to an unfortunate mispunch towards the end of the course. I finished 8th out of 37 on the boys' year 12 course, 4 minutes behind the winner which I was quite pleased with.
For our one year 13 who came this was a massive challenge - it was his second ever course and he could not come to any of the after school practice sessions I tried to run, and what's more the course was green standard in the terrible weather conditions! I think he may be worthy of some prize for managing to find the first and third controls but not the second in just under an hour before retiring, but still a great effort as we got from everybody!
Nine people were needed to make up a school team, which we didn't have, but the year 9s still got their 5th position. The overall winners of the large secondary category were Ulverston Victoria High School, and I will congratulate Nottingham High School, where half the East Midlands juniors seem to come from, on coming 8th out of 13 large secondary schools with enough people to count.
After my run I was hoping to have a go at trail orienteering, which I have never tried before and sounds quite interesting, but it seemed to have been cancelled due to the wind and the rain which was a shame.
This was an exciting day travelling to a national schools competition, and I know that everybody enjoyed it even with the appalling weather and the seven hour minibus journey. Luckily next year we've got the score championships near Nottingham so a little bit closer! Hopefully more schools, like mine, will start to get into orienteering and encourage more youngsters into the sport in the future.
Results and photos can be viewed at www.bsoa.org
