West Juniors navigate to the top at Inter Areas
Each year a Junior Inter Area event is held over one weekend, generally in October. The event consists of a relay event followed by an individual event with juniors from the three Scottish orienteering areas – East, North and West – coming together to compete as a team representing their area. The Saturday night offers the opportunity for juniors to all stay in a youth hostel or other accommodation, socialise, renew old acquaintances and meet new ones from outwith their own clubs/areas.
With each area taking turns to host the event, 2025 was the turn of the West area to organise and play host to Scottish juniors. And so the Scottish juniors descended on the Stirling area on the last weekend in October to see whose area would raise the Trophies and claim the sweet treats on offer as prizes!
The relay event on Saturday was held in the delightful Muiravonside Country Park near Falkirk. The area offered a mix of mature woodland and open grassy areas along the edge of the River Avon and with it’s relatively steep drop to the River provided a physical as well as navigational challenge for the juniors. The location of the arena allowed for team encouragement through the spectator control and then to power their team mates up the hill into the handover. The relay consists of three legs (Orange, Yellow and Light Green) with any junior able to run for their area provided they can run a yellow course on their own. Each relay team should consist of three different age classes to be competitive with an open and a girls class. Any junior not confident enough to run a yellow on their own but wanting to take part are encouraged to form a pair and run although they would be a non competitive team.
The relay event – Muiravonside
In the glorious sunshine the first leg runners of each relay teams gathered and were set off in a mass start first for the Girls and then the Open class. To entertain themselves while they waited for their team mates to pass through the spectator control and then the handover, the remaining juniors entertained themselves playing tig or football depending on their preference. The commentary for the event was lead by some of our East and North area juniors who, between keeping everyone updated on the current standings, posed some difficult post race interview questioning to determining a participant’s Croc colour preference or even why they preferred sliders to Crocs!
As is ever the way with relays the lead was swapped throughout the race but in the end West proved the dominant force on the day lifting aloft the Junior Inter Area Relay Trophy and leading by 8 points over North and East overnight.
Overnight at the Stirling Youth Hostel
The juniors and some parents then headed off to the Stirling Youth Hostel for the evening. It is not only an important event to allow juniors to meet and establish friendships which we hope will continue beyond their junior orienteering experiences but it provides an ideal opportunity for the SOA to ensure the junior’s voice is heard. Between various sittings for the delicious meal provided for all present the opportunity was taken to gather feedback on what opportunities or changes the juniors would like to see in the sport as well as keeping the juniors updated on what has actually been accomplished over the last year.
An evening of fun activities followed the meal and feedback sessions with everyone Liz Owen of Forth Valley Orienteering providing some structured activities from the resources on the SOA website. Orienteering themed twister and origami control making proved to be huge hits before team were formed to compete in a Train Station Game which had everyone searching throughout the hostel for stations followed by the ever popular Evening Quiz! As usual the Junior teams powered past any of the adult teams and after an entertaining evening everyone retired happy and tired.
The individual event – Barrwood
The autumnal weather brought in a cooler and damper day for the individual event in the Barrwood which surrounds the scout camp near Denny. Barrwood offers the challenge of its extensive mature woodland, marshes and cliffs but has several open areas to allow for spectator controls to measure progress by the juniors. Unfortunately some planned forestry work meant the planner had to make the most of a smaller area but he rose to the challenge with butterfly loops meaning concentration was required to avoid mistakes and lost time.
The West area organisers had risen to the challenge of the weather with an indoor barn used for shelter, hot drinks and yet more socialising.
This all lead to a much closer event with North juniors tying on points with West for the Individual Trophy. The result was then decided by a count back on total number of class wins meaning that West raised the Trophy for the Individual event and thus the overall win for the weekend. North were second for the weekend overall with East lying in third place.
Altogether it was a decided the weekend had been a resounding success and everyone’s thanks were offered to Dom Edwards and the overall weekend co-ordinator, Liz Owen for co-ordinating the overnight accommodation and social events, Rob Truswell for planning and Brian Bullen for controlling the Relay event, Simon Hunt for planning and Roger Scrutton (ESOC) for controlling the individual event together with all of the volunteers who made the Inter Areas event possible this year! Well done to West who will hope to retain the trophies when everyone travels to East area for 2026 and many thanks to each of the area team leaders and parents who made it possible for the juniors to attend the events.