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Junior Jabberwaoc
June 2002
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Junior JabberwaocJune 2002 |
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The orienteering season is now in full swing, with the JK, the BOC and
selection races for summer training tours having taken place, and the selections
for those camps having now been made. And what else can I say other than that
WAOC juniors have done extremely well recently. Some great results have been
achieved at the JK, and more recently, some WAOC juniors have travelled to
Northern Ireland with EA Junior Squad to take part in BOC 2002. Edward Louth is
this year's M12A champion, and Helen Gardner took the W16A trophy.
Helen has now also returned from the World Schools Championships in Portugal -
she has had a successful week and brought back a Bronze medal from the short
race, coming home 12th in the classic distance on the older girls' course. A
report from Helen follows below.
Having mentioned selection for summer tours, congratulations to Helen Gardner
(W16), who was selected for the M/W16 tour to Norway, Simon Gardner
(M14) who is one of the East Anglian juniors nominated to go to Lagganlia this
year, and to Neil Northrop (M20), who has been selected for the
U21 training Camp to Modum in Norway.
After coming 3rd in M12A in day 1 of the JK, Edward Louth
finished a very respectable 5th place overall. Meanwhile, Sophie Louth
took the 2nd place overall in W10A, after coming 3rd on day 1 and 2nd on day 2,
followed by Katrin Sengerova in 6th place with one Championship
time.
Well done also to Clare Woods for coming in a very strong 9th
place on the W14A, and once again a great result from Helen Gardner, who
finished with the Silver medal place overall.
Not forgetting to mention our oldest juniors, Leonie Brown came
2nd in the W20L overall, and Neil Northrop, currently a member of
SHUOC who nevertheless ran for WAOC at the JK, who came 5th in the M20 elite,
missing the Bronze medal position by less than a minute.
Well done also to all the other juniors who had very good runs, a number of
Championship times being achieved by a large number of you.
There was an amazingly great turnout at the relay, especially great as so many
juniors competed. We had two teams in the M/W40- relay, finishing 10th
(Sophie, Simon, Martin) and 23rd (Clare, Edward and Katrin) respectively.
Our team entered in the mini relay (W/M12-) was run by a number of first time
relay runners (Katy, Katrina, Thomas), finishing in 7th place.
· At the Trossachs National event in Scotland on 7th April, Helen Gardner
came back in Silver medal position, only 50 seconds behind the class winner on
W16A
· At Bigland on 28th April, Helen Gardner was once again 2nd on
W16A.
Neil Northrop, starting in 5th position before the Future
Champions Cup finals after the combined scores of the previous FCC races,
finished 3rd in the Short Race of the finals, coming 8th in the M20E on the
individual race.
Edward Louth came a great 1st in the M12A class of the individual,
Helen Gardner was 1st on W16A, and Blanka Sengerova
finished 1st on W20L.
At the Relay Championships, our Jabber Juniors (Jamie, Clare and Edward)
finished a very respectable 4th place in the Junior Ad Hoc relay.
After being selected to run in the World Schools Champs, Helen Gardner travelled to Portugal in mid April and spent 10 days in Portugal. Some of this time was taken up by the competition itself, some by training and some by simply enjoying time off school (that's always got to be a plus surely) in Portugal. To make the article a bit more interesting, myself and Helen got together, chatted about the event and tried to put together a kind of interview/article type of composition so hope you like it…
…took at place at the British School Orienteering Championships weekend. As Helen pointed out, it was quite fortunate that there was a special selection race for the WSOC on the Saturday before the actual BSOC event, because otherwise the selectors wouldn't necessarily look at the Year 10 results, selecting mainly from Year 11, 12, and 13 orienteers.
...involved quite a bit of fundraising and thanks go to EAOA and WAOC for providing some of the funds, as well as to all those people involved with the cake stall and the quiz sheets that were all sold to raise money for this event. Helen had planned to travel with Joanne and David West (the other two EA juniors selected for the WSOC) so had been staying in Colchester the night before her flight plane went. One of the things Helen remembers is that this was the first time she had ever been on a train on her own…
The trip included 10 days in Portugal, three of which were taken up by competing.. The first day was travelling, followed by two days of some light training in the competition area. As most of the other national teams didn't have this opportunity to train, there was then a model event, which was followed by the classic distance race, the short race and the friendship relays. For the rest of the trip, socialising and sightseeing was planned.
…was done on very intricate wooded sand-dune type of terrain. During the
classic race, many competitors seemed to have difficulty with the map, claiming
it was wrong/inaccurate in some places. Another cause of complaint was the
extensive undergrowth, which seemed to make it difficult to distinguish
contoured features on the ground. Nevertheless, as Helen is quite able to adapt
to a variety of terrain, she didn't find this too problematic - perhaps
the secret behind her success at the competition?
"Today (14th April) was the most important day, the day of the Classic
distance race. This was a 5 ˝ kilometre course with in excess of 100m of
climb. I took 48.53 mins, placing me third, about two minutes behind
the winner. Generally it was a good race, with only two slight mistakes
which were quickly corrected and a generally fast running speed -as I went
around the majority of the course in quite a large group. I caught up one
of my team-mates at number 5, which worried me - as she had started 12 minutes
before me! Apart from my individual success, as a team it was not a very
good day, with everyone else making at least 15 minutes of mistakes. The
times of the three fastest runners were added together to calculate the
positions, so we were positioned 3rd."
"The short race was much shorter that the classic - about 3km. I did
OK, but my legs were still tired after the classic race, and I made a few
mistakes. I came 12th, which was lower than I had hoped, but as a team we
did much better on this day - with the fastest three combined times for the
sprint race, pushing us up to 2nd place overall."
The teams for the friendship relay were picked but all of the orienteers had to
find their team colleagues by looking at their numbers and searching for others
with the same respective numbers on one occasion. The relay was run as a kind of
combination between a score and classic line event. The course included the
start, finish, and points A and B, which were surrounded by a large number of
controls. All team members must go through A and B at the same time and each has
to collect their own allocated controls in the meantime - efficiency of planning
(which could be done a day in advance) and estimating each other's running and
navigating ability is an important aspect of success. Although Helen worried
slightly about being in a team with orienteers who hadn't done so well on
previous competition days (another girl and boy from Slovenia and Portugal), the
team placed themselves quite well.
…first of all, everyone spoke English, which was great in some ways because there was no problem in understanding each other. But in some ways, it was quite difficult when you wanted to practice another language yourself. Of course there was the disco and lots of other opportunities to meet people from different countries. Perhaps, they did not quite necessarily need to speak in all of the languages at the prize giving…once you've heard it once or twice you know what first, second and third is in Portuguese…
Well, orienteering wise this definitely has to be coming 3rd on the short
race, but socially the event disco, which was on the night after the classic
race was tops. Everyone enjoyed this, although some more than others took
advantage of the fact that they would never see half these people again,
especially some of the Portuguese boys! Another notable moment was when Sarah
Browne looked up some sand-dune and challenged one of the boys to a race to the
top. Obviously meaning to go straight up the sandy bit, but remember sometimes
you win by list (or is it better route choice?). In this case it had been easier
to go the longer but easier way…
Getting sun-tanned had been quite obviously on the agenda though perhaps not so
much on the first day… "The day after our arrival, training was on the
schedule but for the morning orienteering was happily forgotten, and the time
was spent on the (amazingly cold) beach. Everyone started out
optimistically in shorts and t-shirts doing the equation - Portugal + Beach =
Hot + Suntan, but soon realised that because of the cool breeze it was actually
freezing!"
"The night after the short race there was the Culture Evening - where every
country had to perform a piece which showed in some way a bit about their
culture. There was a lot of traditional singing and dancing and numerous chances
for audience participation. England performed some country dancing then (as a
slight joke) seven of the older lot danced to S-Club7, the slight problem was
that apparently no other countries knew who they were - so were not quite as
amused as we were of the boys trying to dance!"
Once again, congratulations to the juniors who have managed to obtain the
following awards…
· Katrin Sengerova and Thomas Louth both managed to
obtain the yellow standard
· Edward Louth now has his light green
badge
· Clare Woods is now a competent green
runner
· Adam Smith gains his orange
as well
· Caitlin Campbell gets her white
badge and
· Alice Campbell has now got both white
and yellow
Both Alice and Caitlin should have been awarded these at the AGM.
There would seem to be more who have achieved standards at green but I haven't
tracked down results from 3 events.. If you can phone or email these
with par times I'll award badges.
Edward Louth has just started doing green, and Martin Humphries is topping the
results at green and, I hear, trying the blue course….
Cath Pennington
Instead of a puzzle, I have decided to include a different type of
competition in this edition of Junior Jabberwaoc. As you may have noticed, the
front page of Junior Jabber looks very similar to that of the main club
magazine. It would be very nice if the juniors could have their own front page.
Which is where you come in! Here's the chance to show your hidden artistic
talents and come up with a design to stun all the other juniors and, at the same
time, give Junior Jabber its own identity…
To give you enough time to come up with ideas, I will ask to have designs by 1st
July. You can send them either on paper (I can scan them) or as email
attachments. There will be a prize for the best design (to be judged by
the committee): a WAOC junior T-shirt that will have the winning logo printed on
it…and of course the winning logo will be used on future Junior Jabbers!
Answers to 'Geographical guess-game' from April 2002:
1 = Sweden, 2 = Norway, 3 = USA, 4 = Salt Lake, 5 = Rocky Mountains, 6 = Mont
Blanc, 7 = Sahara Desert, 8 = Amazon River
Here's just to remind those of you who find yourselves waiting for your parents after you've had your runs with nothing to do but wander around the car park… What about a challenge and having a go at another course? Perhaps even with your parents or someone else following you if it's a colour that you haven't tried before… Remember that at WAOC colour coded events, juniors get a second run free!
The British Championships having been so much further afield than usual there
was a smaller contingent of WAOC competitors than you would usually expect at a
British Champs event. Those who did come, though, enjoyed a particularly sunny
May Day weekend (who would expect to need suntan lotion in Ireland
anyway??), on brilliant sand-dune terrain during the individual race, and
an enjoyable atmosphere at the relays (including watching the up-hill
finish!). And notably some of our juniors had the pleasure of going up to
collect a British Champion trophy at the prize-giving.
After a very early start for those of us travelling with the Junior Squad from
Stansted early on Saturday, there was an opportunity to familiarise ourselves
with the terrain on the land adjacent to the competition area. The terrain was
that of an open sand-dune area, covered in some thorny undergrowth in places
with a lot of intricate contour detail everywhere. It was clear that you would
definitely need to stay in contact with the map during the
competition. Though it's always much easier walking across all these
knolls, pits and depressions and knowing exactly where they are on the map than
it is when running under the pressure of a race!
Meanwhile, the short race, part of the final of the Future Champions Cup, took
place on (I am told) the side of a very steep hill not far from the training
area. Due to his ankle injury Peter Gardner, WAOC's junior captain, was unable
to
start on the M18E, but Neil Northrop (although running under SHUOC colours!)
finished 3rd on the M20E, only 2 seconds behind second place.
The Individual competition area was Magilligan Point, an area used for military
training. So whilst running past the out of bounds shooting ranges, strange
things like metal pop-up cows (!) could be observed. It appeared that the
familiarisation day before seemed to have been quite useful. And, at least
speaking for myself, I went out to enjoy the course, but was pleased to find
that I managed to know exactly where I was for most of the time. There was much
success from the ranks of WAOC juniors, who had travelled to Northern Ireland
with the EA Junior Squad, notably Edward Louth coming back as an M12A
champion and Helen Gardner continuing her orienteering
glory as W16A champion.
Other notable WAOC results included…
· Simon Gardner 9th with a Championship time on M14A
· Neil Northrop 8th on the M20E
· Blanka Sengerova 1st on the W20L
· Chris Morley 10th of 28 with a Championship time on M60L
· Neil Humphries a strong 13th of 41 on M40L
· Rolf Crook a respectable 11th of 21 on M21L
On Bank Holiday Monday it was time for the relays. They took place at
Baronscourt, a bit further inland than both the training and individual days.
The first thing most of us noticed when we got to the event was the uphill
straight into the finish - that's the bit where you simply have to run.
(Fortunately it wasn't that bad once you finally got to it…). Some good
personal runs were achieved by a number of WAOC members. But notably
WAOC's Junior Ad Hoc team, the Jabber Juniors (Jamie Taylor, Clare Woods, Edward
Louth) finished 4th, whilst WAOC's team on the Women's Short (Helen
Gardner, Nicola Gardner, Blanka Sengerova) finished in a respectable 7th place.
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