June 2021 Newsletter   

What's on in June?

Not a whole heck of a lot, but our backyards are sure going to look nice this year!  With the current re-opening plan, it is possible that low-key orienteering activities could begin around mid-July.

O-Talk & Course Discourse, the weekly webinar started in May, is ongoing for June.  It's not too late to join in on Sunday evenings at 7pm to casually talk about either a MapRun course (Course Discourse) or some other orienteering related topic (O-Talk).  Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. for info. 

Outreach 2020-21 Update

Written by Rorry Harding

In the fall, we ran activities for 15 days for 900 students. Since Christmas, we have run 22 activities for 1200 students. We were at about 14 different schools across 3 school boards.

Engagement by students and teachers has been almost universally positive with some students in every class really giving it their all, delivering some very fast times and very pumped with their results.  The SI is always a big hit.  Courses are simple and often limited to school grounds but they do have to work at it.  

This was the first year that we ran activities in the winter, which turned out better than anticipated. 

Interest has been at the Grade 7 level and above this school year.  There is a lot of interest from schools in 3 boards, all through word-of-mouth alone until recently.

Tom Graham deserves recognition and thanks for consistently providing a great experience for students and teachers. 

We have also run on-line training for Senior Cadets and Leaders, more to show them how we teach orienteering and to provide them with teaching resources.  That effort required development of some very good on-line training material, which we will be delivering to teachers in the fall. Hopefully, we will also be running clinics in the field for them. 

September through November should be very busy and although we are working to set up teachers to be able to run their own activities, we will need more instructors that can help during school hours.  Please feel free to ask me about it.

Team Canada Fundraiser

Orienteering Ottawa has 5 club athletes on Team Canada Programs:  Luke and Evan Raz, Alec LeHelloco, Philipe Turcanu, and Robert Graham.  

During the month of June, Team Canada Program athletes will record the number of controls they visit while training or competing.  Encourage our Team Canada athletes to get out on a map this month and support their fundraiser by making a pledge. 

Trail-O

Written by Stefan Bergstrom

Do you know that there are four orienteering disciplines recognized by IOF, the International Orienteering Federation? In Ottawa we do our regular forest or sprint orienteering events. We also organize Ski-Orienteering in the winter, and a handful of times we have tried mountain bike orienteering, MTB-O. The fourth discipline is Trail-Orienteering.

Trail-O is more about map reading and understanding, no running is required. Trail-O started as a way to get people with reduced mobility to experience orienteering. It has developed to its own competition discipline, open to anyone, as the speed of movement is not a deciding factor, only the skill in reading the map.

The route goes along walkways or paths that a wheelchair can travel. Along the route there are stations with several control points marked with control flags. A map shows one of the controls and the challenge is to decide which of the control flags, marked A-F or Z for none of the above, is the one marked on the map.

The sport now has World Championship and national and international events. During the COVID pandemic there has been many virtual competitions on-line. They are fun to practise your map reading skills. Many can be incredibly challenging, as you are stressed by a time limit.

Here are a couple of examples.

You can find Trail-O training events and competitions at http://temposim.yq.cz/tempo.cgi.

I suggest you start by looking at the Model Station and the free training courses before attempting a competition. Have fun!

Newsletter Logo

Thank-you to Liran Raz for his idea for the newsletter logo!

Dreaming of the Future