HIGH PERFORMANCE
Mike Dowling, OA Director, High Performance
A good year for our High Performance athletes
Performance program in a position called Head Coach. The central role of the Head Coach will be to work with both national team coaches and state National League coaches to improve both the quality of coaching and the competitive outcomes of aspiring high performance athletes. In addition, it is anticipated that the Head Coach will have a vital role in working with our National Training Centre partner, the ACT Academy of Sport, to continue to build on the role of the Orienteering program at ACTAS as a leader in coach and athlete development for Orienteering. Our new coaching structure is set out below.
W
ITH the 2005 competition season drawing to a close as I write this column it is a timely point to look back upon the year that was. By all measures 2005 has been a very good year for our High Performance athletes. In the National League the Canberra Cockatoos took out the senior division from the Victorian Nuggets in a team competition that was not decided until the final round held in conjunction with the Australian relay Championships in Tasmania. Even here the result was uncertain until the final legs of the relays when events conspired to take the Victorians out of the frame. In the junior division it was fantastic, from a national development standpoint, to see Western Australia take out their first national title. With Queensland taking out the national schools championships it was very heartening from a national perspective to see two States achieve successes that have traditionally been dominated by States from the South East central axis and bodes well for the continued national development of Orienteering. On the international front we have seen some fantastic performances this year. Earlier in the year David Brickhill-Jones produced an outstanding performance to take a silver medal in a round of the World Cup in England showing what a competitive international orienteer he is. At the Junior World Championships in Switzerland we collectively saw our most competitive overall performance for a long time. Hanny Allston became the first junior female Australian athlete to medal with a bronze in the Middle-distance and Julian Dent came oh-so-close with a 4th in the Long-distance. Julian had previously finished 8th in the Middle-distance a couple of days earlier. With their representation in the senior WOC team as well, Hanny and Julian certainly lead the way as the new generation of high quality international orienteers to wear Australian colours. Also the girl’s team of Hanny, Erin Post and Jasmine Neve put in a superb effort to place 7th in the JWOC relays. At the World Championships in Japan, which were a very tough WOC by any measure, we saw our first ever podium finish with Hanny placing 6th in the Long-distance in what was a magnificent effort in such physically demanding conditions. Her effort topped the placing of Troy de Hass a couple of days earlier in the Sprint-distance with a 7th place that was oh-so-close to a medal winning run. Another great highlight of the WOC was the effort of Tracy Bluett to place 13th in the Middle-distance in a return to international competition following the birth of daughter Tiia. The low point of the team was the failure of all the men to record a finish in the Long-distance race. At the MTBO World Championships in Slovakia Adrian Jackson again showed why he is one of the world’s best orienteers in this format of Orienteering with a 3rd in the Long-distance and an 8th in the Middle-distance. Queensland’s Anna Sheldon took another step up in MTBO with a podium finishing 6th in the Middledistance and also an 8th in the Long-distance to undoubtedly show she is Queensland’s most successful orienteer in international competition.
New Coaching Structures For High Performance Development In concert with the review of the operations of Orienteering in Australia as a result of the changed funding allocation by the Australian Sports Commission the Board of OA has decide upon a new direction for high performance coaching and management. As this issue hits the letterboxes of Australian orienteers we will be in the process of appointing a person to lead our High 30 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER DECEMBER 2005
Coaching Structure High Perfomnce Head Coach
Mens Coach
Womens Coach
Bushrangers Coach
National League State Coaches
JWOC Coach
JWOC Support Coach
MTBO Coach
MTBO Support Coach
Individual & Club Coaches
New National Coaches The Board of OA was delighted to appoint Grant Bluett and Gareth Candy as joint National Junior Coaches for the period 2006-07. With Australia hosting JWOC in 2007 both Gareth and Grant are enthusiastically working to build on the team successes at JWOC this year for the 2006 JWOC in Lithuania and then onto Dubbo in 2007. In addition, it’s also time to acknowledge the work and effort of retiring National Junior Coach Paul Pacqué who has been in the role for a number of years. Thanks Paul for all your valuable work with our juniors and you’ve left our junior program in a sound state. On the MTBO front we are delighted to re-appoint Kay Haarsma as national coach. Kay has done much to date in working with our MTBO athletes and is a passionate advocate of the MTBO high performance program. With regard to our senior Foot O team we are currently in the process of determining the coaching positions with a change of focus and moving to a dual male and female athlete centred coaching team. With the continued rapid growth in the international competitive depth of Foot Orienteering we felt it was the right time to have two coaches working with specific groups of our athletes to maintain and build on our international results of 2005. It also appropriate to thank our national coach for the last two years in Jim Russell for all his dedicated work with the senior team. Jim always puts in more than the minimum as a coach and often goes beyond the call of duty.
Thanks Jason & Nev The end of 2005 will see the end of an era in Orienteering with Nev Bleakley retiring as Manager, Coaching & Officiating and Jason McCrae finishing up as Manager, High Performance to take on a new career direction upon finishing his masters degree. I would like to extend a sincere personal vote of thanks to Jason and Nev for the dedicated, passionate and enthusiastic commitment they have put into furthering Australian Orienteering in their roles. They have done so much for Orienteering and I wish them well for wherever the future takes them.
Strategic Plan 2006-2008 The approval of our new strategic plan for the next three-year period will be currently under consideration at the Annual Conference of OA. As has been mentioned before in this column the Plan is the
