S C H O O L S D E V E LO P M E N T
Out of the mouths of babes – The real meaning of Orienteering Janet Buchan (AWOC President) Albury Wodonga Orienteering Club (AWOC) runs some popular Orienteering courses for local primary schools with members volunteering their valuable time to help out. Following a course late last year we received the attached thank you letter from one of the young children (age about 8), which I think says it all about Orienteering and the value of the schools programs. It also has some unusual ideas about how to make Orienteering more interesting for the younger generation (not sure about “putting clippers on the roofs of houses and other islands”, but it makes one think!). In all our competitiveness and the necessary rules and regulations of Orienteering we perhaps lose sight of the real meaning of Orienteering - that it must be fun. If you too can want to play it on your birthday, and in your dreams and to hide clippers everywhere; if you too are smiling and puffing after Orienteering (puffing - we can all probably say ‘yes’ to that one!!), then you are having fun and Orienteering is doing its job. I vote our anonymous young person in as our next OA publicity officer! Let’s rock for orienteering! The letter translated: 1. Orienteering is so much fun. If you Put 2000 Clippers every where I would do it for ever. Hide them and trick me. Make it hard. Put them on roofs of house. And other islands. I tell you it is so much fun. 2. Every Monday we do Orienteering and after it I would be smiling and puffing Just because it is fun. 3. Because its fun I would Play it on my birthday party. Play in my dream. 4. race tracks will be good because you will get exercise. 5. GOOD Health. YEAH. Come on orienteering. Let’s rock For Orienteering. (author unknown – age 8, Wodonga)
O-Spy Tim (no compass) Dent Tim Dent (Yarra Valley, VIC) believes that a compass makes navigation too easy in most Australian terrain, so he is regularly seen out on a course without a compass. With this in mind your O-Spy was astonished to see Tim carrying a compass at the World Masters Orienteering Championships Sprint qualification event in the medieval town of Leiria in Portugal. Tim claims he didn’t use the compass, but why would he in a street-O event? For the record, Tim carried his compass in all the WMOC events.
14 THE AUSTRALIAN ORIENTEER SEPTEMBER 2008
Tip from a World Champion Finland’s World Champion, Minna Kauppi, does things differently. She stands out from the crowd. In fact, one Finn was heard to say “She’s not like the rest of us, you know”. At the World Orienteering Championships in Czech Republic it was easy to pick out Kauppi from a great distance as she ran towards spectator or TV controls. She was the one with an enormous sheet of paper flapping from her hand. Apparently she doesn’t fold the map down to a manageable size like most orienteers. Whether this gives her an advantage is not for O-Spy to judge, but she certainly moves fast through the terrain.
