Hopefully by now, you’ve got the date in your diary for this year’s Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival. If not, here’s another reminder!
Issues with permissions might have meant that we headed for Airdrie for our 2nd Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) event of the year instead of the Trossachs but it didn’t mean we had any less fun! Forth Valley Orienteers rose to the last minute restriction of permissions in the Trossachs to bring us a new area at Limeriggs. The planner went as far as to say it had Swedish parts and while only some may have travelled far enough to reach them there was plenty to challenge.
The 2025 Scottish Sprint Championship was the 4th event in this years Scottish Inter Club Championships and saw no change in the current standings.
Read More…For some the 2025 Scottish Sprint Championship and 3rd Scottish Orienteering Urban League (SOUL) event of the year was the first weekend of the Easter Holidays and for others it was a delightful taste of Vitamin sunshine paired with a pair of Urban brain teasers.
We are pleased to announce the latest round of funding awards made through the SOA Development Fund. This fund is designed to provide financial support to projects that contribute to the development of the sport and fit within the remit of the SportScotland agreed development objectives for the sport. Specifically at this point, we asked clubs to come to us with projects that focus on the recruitment and development of 20-40 year olds, continued development of participation following WOC 2024 and support for clubs that saw a dramatic decline in membership following the Covid pandemic.
Congratulations to the clubs that have received awards: EckO, GRAMP, INVOC and MAROC. These clubs all provided project proposals that satisfy the above conditions and have committed themselves to helping develop our sport.
The PVG scheme helps ensure that people who are unsuitable to work with children and protected adults cannot do regulated roles with them. People who are barred from working with these groups cannot join the scheme. It is against the law for an organisation to employ someone to work with children or protected adults if they’re barred from doing it.
From April 2025, it is an offence to have an individual in a regulated role with children and protected adults without PVG scheme membership. It’s also illegal for the barred person to do or try to do a regulated role.
Read More…Are you getting the most as a coach from your planning software? Technical competency can really help with planning good sessions, but obviously involves learning an additional set of skills. SOA has a wealth of support available amongst its active members, ably demonstrated at the most recent online Coach CPD session on Wednesday evening. We had an excellent session led by Lynne Walker (BASOC) on using Condes for coaching, with coaches from clubs including FVO, Interlopers, INVOC, Moravian and TAY getting together to learn some very useful tools and tricks.
This year, having sought feedback again at the end of 2024 , the Scottish Inter Club Championships will again be compiled from a club results of events from twelve events during the year. The events have been selected with a view to those which most clubs will try to attend as a means of encouraging club members to attend the large events and so the majority are either Championship events or national events other than one event in the north and one in the south.
Read More…After the sunshine in Dallaschyle, we were treated to the orienteer’s dream and the east end of Culbin. A vast expanse of sand dunes featuring terrain rich in complex contour detail, cloaked with pine forest of varying openness and runnability. The rarely used north eastern part of Culbin was a delight with soft moss underfoot as we ran up and down and in amongst the dunes with small pockets of lower-visibility forest to catch the unwary.
This weekend saw a double header in the Highlands with Inverness Orienteering Club (INVOC) hosting the Scottish Middle Distance Championships at Dallaschyle just outside Cawdor and Moravian Orienteering Club hosting the first Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) event of the season in the east of Culbin Forest.
