NATIONAL ORIENTEERING LEAGUE

2022 results

BLAIR TREWIN

KO Sprint final - Milla Key - Zoe Carter - Nea Shingler.

The honours were spread around in the National Orienteering League in 2022, with the four team titles going to four different States. The season was more heavily Sprint-based than usual ahead of the first Sprint WOC, with half the 12 rounds being in that format; the season started with a Sprint weekend in Melbourne and finished with one on the Gold Coast, with a Forest weekend in Canberra and the Australian 3-Days falling in between. Both senior team results were a repeat of those from 2021. Victoria, under their new name of the Vikings, swept the early rounds in the men’s competition, and although they found the going harder with a depleted team at Easter, beating the Canberra Cockatoos for second place in the Sprint Relay on the Gold Coast ended any realistic chance of their being caught. The Cockatoos were second, while Brodie Nankervis, returning to running for his original home State, led the Tassie Foresters to their best-ever result of third. The Canberra Cockatoos were even more dominant amongst the women, getting maximum points for every round except the Sprint Relay. The Southern Arrows, whose win there was their season highlight, were second in all but one other round and took second overall comfortably ahead of the Victorians. The closest team competition was that of the junior women, where the decisive moment came early in the season, when the Queensland Cyclones won the Round 3 Forest Relay and the NSW Stingers mispunched. The 18-0 scoreline from that round gave the Cyclones a massive edge, and although the Stingers won most of the remaining rounds, the Cyclones’ second place in the Sprint Relay was enough to give them the title by a single point. With Emily Sorensen having graduated to the senior ranks, the Southern Arrows never looked likely to defend their title and ended up in third. The Stingers had a much easier time of it in the junior men, where they got maximum points from 11 of the 12 rounds; there the close contest was for second place, with the Cyclones’ Sprint Relay result enough to see them edge out the Victorian Vikings. As with the teams, the senior individual winners were both on top for the second successive time. Aston Key was the dominant figure of the men’s season, winning eight of the ten individual rounds. He only dropped points at the Prologue and day 3 of Easter, won by Brodie Nankervis and Alastair George respectively. Despite missing the final round, Nankervis had done enough earlier in the season to hold off George for second. Grace Crane had had to wait 14 years for her third title but only needed one more for her fourth, with her wins on three of the four Zoe Carter, winner of Gold days of the Easter weekend Coast Knock Out Sprint. proving decisive, following an earlier win on the tough physical Middle Distance at the Gib in early April. Caitlin Young, who won twice during the year, was next in line, just ahead of Shannon Jones, who didn’t win a race but was in the top five at every start. The individual round honours were spread around, with Aislinn Prendergast, Belinda Lawford, Tara Melhuish and Evalin Brautigam all winning races. In the juniors, Ewan Shingler matched Aston Key’s feat of winning eight out of ten rounds, and thus reversed the top two from last year, pushing defending champion David Stocks into second place. Third through eighth were separated by only 18 points, led by a dead-heat for third; Grant Reinbott made it there despite not contesting any rounds outside Queensland, while Sam Woolford put together a consistent string of results, placing in the top five in nine out of ten rounds. Two of the younger members of the junior women’s field led the way. Although Nea Shingler had the odd bad day, at her best she was clearly ahead of the rest of the junior field (and sometimes the senior field too), and four wins were enough to give her the title comfortably over another rising star, her Stingers teammate Erika Enderby. Julia Gannon’s Easter win was key in lifting her to third, just ahead of Mikayla Cooper and Joanna George. All three won races, but perhaps the most interesting individual result of the season came on its final day; five of the six finalists in the Knock Out Sprint were juniors, and at the front was Zoe Carter, hitherto little-known outside her home State of South Australia. The depth of Sprint performance augurs well for Australian teams over the coming years.