September is seen by some as the start of a new orienteering season. For others, o never stops. Summer is the festival season, and over the past few weeks, NOR has been represented at o-ringen in Sweden as well as the Lakes 5-days, and some of us will be spending the bank holiday weekend at the White Rose in Scarborough. You’ll be able to hear more about these trips, and other highlights of the past 12 months in the upcoming NorNews.
So, what have we got to look forward to in the coming season? We’ve got weekly training around Norwich on Wednesday nights, monthly Sunday events around Norfolk, and potential trips further afield.
Captain
Captain’s News
East Anglian Champions
On a beautiful sunny day at Sheringham Park, we had our most successful ever East Anglian championships, with a total of 13 trophies, ranging from under-16 to over-85.
The winners were:
M16 William Blythe-Bartram
M18 Thomas Blythe-Bartram
M21 Glen Richardson
M40 Ben Bethell
W45 Katherine Blythe-Bartram
M45 Howard Alcock
M50 Ian Renfrew
W60 Kim Eden
M70 Mick Liston
W75 Gill Pilgrim
W85 Barbara George
M85 Alan Coddington
and William also won the Joan George trophy for the best junior performance, following in the footsteps of previous NOR winners Kate Kelleher, Laurence Ball and Ella Gilbert.
Well done to everyone, and many thanks to all the officials for enabling us to enjoy this wonderful orienteering venue.
Success at British Schools Orienteering Championships
Junior club captain Steven Denby fulfilled a long-held ambition on Sunday by winning the British Schools Championships. Steven first competed at this competition when he was in year 7 in 2012. In that time he has come 13th, 2nd, 5th, 3rd, 10th, 3rd, and now, in his last year, he has finally won the gold medal.
This year’s competition took place in Blackburn, and Steven set the leading time of 39:29 early on. We then had a nervous wait of over an hour while everyone else tried to beat him. Matthew Clarke from SUFFOC was always going to be one of the big threats, so when he posted 41:42 we started to believe this could be Steven’s year.
Eventually it was confirmed that Steven had won, and was declared the Year 13 British Schools Orienteering Champion for 2018, emulating Ella Gilbert’s win in 2015. Following on from the Jukola and the Compasssport Final, it was great to see NOR and SUFFOC together on the podium. There were also impressive 6th place finishes for the Bartram brothers, and 5 juniors made their debut at this level.Well done everyone – We did it.
NOR are though to the final of the CompassSport Cup for the very first time
Final Score: NOR 2421, LEI 2399, NOC 2113
Full Results can be found on the SUFFOC website. Individual & Club.
It really was a tremendous team effort. I’ve just been looking at the results and trying to figure out how we did it. The simple answer is that we had lots of good runs. Lots of you beat more highly ranked runners from LEI and / or NOC.
So, we now have a fixture that has never featured in the NOR calendar before. The CompassSport Cup Final takes place in Staffordshire on Sunday October 21st. Put it in your diary!
Glen
