Italy

The juniors arrived in Italy on Friday after a stop over in Dubai.

We stayed in Camping Fusina for two nights. On Saturday we spent the day in Venice. We are now staying in a house near the training areas. The Germans will be joining us in our house shortly and the Canadians and Americans are staying just down the road.

We are doing two training sessions a day. Yesteray we did two middle sessions. The climb to the start of the second session was insane. The views are spectacular and we can see snow on some of the mountains.

This morning we did a sprint session followed by a middle training this afternoon.
We are having a great time and are getting to know some of the other teams.

We'll put some maps up as soon as we can.

Gauteng Champs

It was a great weekend of orienteering with two interesting, new areas.

Saturday's middle distance event was at Hennops Pride. The junior catagories were hotly contested. In W20 there were 6 competitors. Sarah had a speedy run to take gold, with Salome in second. Zoe took 3rd place.

M20 had 4 competitors. Micheal Crone won the course, with JP, Rophafadzo and Nicholas De Klerk from UCT not far behind.

Jess L ran W21 and came 2nd. Brad also moved up a category and came 6th on the M21 course.

Team manager Richard won M50 and coach Nic took gold on M21.
The Long Distance event was at Protea Ridge on Sunday. On the W20 course Sarah had a good run to take the win. Salome was only 3 minutes behind with Jess L a further 3 minutes back in 3rd. Jess H was 4th and Zoe finished in 5th. Here is Sarah's route:

Below is Salome heading out of the start box.

On the M20 course Brad won in an insanely quick time. Here is Brad's route:
The Junior squad was presented with their SA kit at Prize Giving:

Our results showed that we are well prepared and ready to go. We leave for Italy on Thursday. We know it's going to be tough, but it's going to be lots of fun too. We'll try to post lots of photos, maps and results on the blog so keep an eye on it.

JWOC Fundraiser

Thanks to everyone who supported our event. We hope you had lots of fun!

The juniors learned a lot about planning an event. We spent ages figuring out all the details...
Finally everything came together...
And after a tough day we still managed to look good in our sponsored shirts...
Well done to the juniors for all the hard work especially with exams on the go!

See everyone at Gauteng Champs. Only 9 days until we leave!

Junior Squad Training 5

Our last training session on SA soil was at Hennops on Sunday. We started off with a corridor exercise:
Next we did a one man relay which consisted of three legs: a course on a contour only map, a line course and a compass and pacing course.

Thanks to Nic for another good session.

The highlight of our day was receiving our South African O' suits. They look awesome and we will definitely be doing it with style in Italy! Thank you to the SAOF and the Lottery for funding. Thanks to everyone else involved in organizing the suits.

Junior FUNdraising event on Youth Day.

It's at HeronBridge and we will be starting on the sports field side. We're planning a tricky course with a twist so it's going to be lots of fun. Bring all your family and friends.

We'll be selling the usual drinks, chips and chocolates as well as warm drinks and some baked goodies.

Here's the event sheet.

Hope to see everyone there!

Coach Nic in Europe

Nicholas is currently in Hungary taking part in a WOC training camp and will soon be heading to Finland for the Nordic Champs / World Cup.

Follow his experiences and check out some of his maps on the SA National O' Squad blog: http://www.rsaorienteers.blogspot.com/

Cinderella Dam

On the 31st of May the juniors tackled the mine-dumps of Boksburg. The middle distance event was dominated by lots of dust, black-jacks, pipelines and a very chilly wind.

On the brown course Sarah came 2nd, 2 minutes behind Tania (59 minutes). Jess L was 3rd.

Jeremy cruised round the brown course in 37 minutes. Here is his route: Zoe was the 2nd lady on blue and Jess H, suffering from flu, walked her way to victory on green.

After the action the juniors had a photo session:

Manager Richard and SAOF President Eugene are standing at the back with Zoe, Salome, Jess L, Steph, Jess H and Sarah at the front. Brad and Nic weren't able to make it to the photo shoot.