As we approach the end of November we would like to extend our sincerest thanks to Denise Martin who leaves Scottish Orienteering after 3 years in the Coaching and Volunteering Officer position. Denise has brought humour, integrity and a great deal of innovation to the role. Not only has she been able to pivot to online delivery, when necessary, but has driven forward the re-working of coaching materials across a wide range of our curriculum. She has been a popular member of the team and we wish her the very best in her next chapter.

Will we ? Won’t we ? That has become the familiar pattern for 2021 so we were delighted when Forth Valley Orienteers (FVO) agreed, at very short notice, to host the British and Scottish Relay Championships for 2021.

A beautiful day dawned allowing for an exciting event with some closely fought races between Juniors and for those contending the Men’s and Women’s trophies.

Fairy Knowe and Doon Hill provided a high quality technical challenge with generally good conditions underfoot despite the deluge the day before that threatened to swamp the start area!

Experienced Russian coach Mike Vinogradov is organising a series of free webinars suitable for orienteering coaches and athletes. He is asking interested parties to indicate their topic preferences via a google survey.

Congratulations to all the juniors who have been selected to be part of the new Talent Scotland squad and thanks to all the coaches who have volunteered to support them.

So what is Talent Scotland?

As a follow-up to the conversation last week on how we keep young people engaged in orienteering, we are seeking more views and ideas around this topic. Help us by having your say here . We ‘d love to hear more from young people themselves so please share this widely. We have gathered in the initial thoughts on the subject to share with you.

This weekend the Scottish Junior Orienteering Squad headed west to Taynuilt for their first camp of the 2021/22 season. The new juniors to the squad had quite an introduction to ScotJOS camps thanks to the great Scottish weather….

These series of online workshops are designed by our experienced planners and tailored for our juniors. Orienteering needs more planners and who better to start this movement than our enthusiastic and ever so talented young orienteers.

Medals from the last three Scottish Championship events have now been distributed to clubs.

Recently I posted about the trophy below. This shows past winners from students at Glasgow, St. Andrews, Heriot Watt and Aberdeen Universities as well as Edinburgh. Only Edinburgh has a strong club today and Aberdeen also has a presence but beyond that, there is little university orienteering action in Scotland.

Where have they all gone? What has changed? Can we turn this around?

Join in the conversation on keeping young people engaged Monday 1st Nov 7pm. Sign up here

The Scottish Government is delivering an event titled ‘Sports for Climate Action’ at COP26, on Monday 1st November from 10:10 – 11:00. We wanted to share details of the event and a link to watch live.