Category: News

The Jim Doig Medal 2019 for meritrious performance by a Scottish junior orienteer has been awarded to Megan Keith.

The Scottish Orienteering 6-Day Event Company are pleased to announce that the new website www.scottish6days.com is now live!  Plus, there is more good news afoot! Lochaber 2021 to be hosted 1st-7th August will be the 23rd staging of the hugely popular Scottish 6 Days. Bring in the New Year by getting your entries into this fantastic event. Entries open on 1st January 2021!!!

We are delighted to announce the successful appointment of a new Independent Director to the SOA Board as we warmly welcome Peter Heffernan. Peter is an actuary within PWC based in Edinburgh and brings previous orienteering experience into the role, although he admits it has been a few years since his last event!

Due to changes in the travel legislation there has been some amendments to our SOA guidance on orienteering activities and events. This guidance will be issued to Club Covid Officers and we advise any questions be directed to Fiona@Scottish-orienteering.org We have outlined below all changes that have been made to highlight those areas which have changed.

Many of us know TEAM can stand for Together Everyone Achieves More. How can we use this so that an event team (planner, organiser, controller) work together as a team to make the event even better – and remove some stress and strain from actually taking on an event team role?

We are delighted to share the December issue of Score magazine.

Our new issue is packed with orienteering content for you to devour this December. We talk to first time planners and orienteers and see how they are faring in Covid times. There is a celebration of some of our very cool orienteering women and girls at Aberdeen University and Moray. You will also find the latest on squad updates; news of an event partnership with a Lossiemouth brewery that will be of interest to clubs with an eye to something different; and of course what is the thing called Turf we have been hearing about ? We get the Edinburgh perspective. Finally some well-kent faces from around the country and Scottish orienteering bravely make their predictions for 2021! And we even give you a festive puzzle to get your teeth into.

And we thank SOA photo competition winner Colin Brash for the sensational cover image of Arria glimpsed in a snowy Cumbernauld Community Park during a STAG Score event. You can download the PDF version of Score here – along with all the back copies – to enjoy at your leisure.

Many thanks to all our contributors for this edition! If you have a story to share or pictures we would love to see them! We are particularly looking for news of local events and how clubs are rising to the challenge for the April issue – tips, tricks, pitfalls, wins – let us know and send us photos to score@scottish-orienteering.org,

It has been fantastic to see the growth in popularity and availability of MapRun events over the last 8 months and it is now possible to find courses all over Scotland. It has also been great to hear of lots of people new to orienteering discovering the sport through trying MapRun courses in their area. We’d like to build on this grassroots development to ensure that MapRun courses can easily be found by anyone, and have therefore undertaken a reorganisation of the folder structure for all Scottish courses.

Thank you all for your patience as we sought clarity on the travel restrictions outlined in our guidance. Matters raised at the Covid Officer session last Thursday were really useful in our approach to these guidelines published today.

Two major changes are coming on 1 January 2021, and in both these cases, it’s important athletes and support personnel are aware of the changes before the new year, so any unintentional mistakes and bans can be avoided.

Since being co-opted onto the Board in April and formally elected at the recent EGM, Ade has had a considerable impact on the areas of Operations. He has been a popular board member and one we are sorry to lose. He has been instrumental in establishing our Planner Advocate and Controller Advocate roles and working closely with SOA staff to ensure there have been opportunities for members to progress their skills during lockdown and beyond.