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Junior Orienteering is supported at a range of levels in Scotland – through schools, clubs, regional squads
and national squads, allowing juniors the option to participate at a level which suits them. Whatever your level of ability, as a junior orienteer there are groups you can join to enjoy orienteering and push yourself further to explore new places, make great friends and have fun!

Most juniors start orienteering with families at local events and the clubs running these events will have
junior training available and there will be regional junior training ( East, North or West). As ever with orienteering, it can be difficult to navigate the minefield of acronyms and jargons and to find out more about pathways for junior orienteering. This attempts to explain some of this jargon and show the opportunities available to juniors.

This month the Junior European Championship (JEC) took place in Stirling and the Trossachs. Many of you will have seen the many British Orienteering Federation posts but for those of you who didn’t there were some Scottish junior performances and of course our amazing volunteer efforts which deserve to be highlighted. Not only had the volunteers lead by the lead organiser, Jason Inman of Forth Valley Orienteers (FVO) taken on the challenge of hosting JEC with races for spectators but they had also adding the Veteran Home Internationals (VHIs) to the mix.

BOF updated rules

As your club controllers will be aware the BOF Rules of Foot Orienteering have been amended as of 1st January 2024 in order to bring rules into line with the IOF policy to equalise men’s and women’s winning times for all age classes. The rules can be found here https://www.britishorienteering.org.uk/rules and include changes to the course which certain age classes are to run and course length ratios.  Course tables in the rules have been updated to show which course each age class will now run.

Addition of new Age Class for Scottish Orienteering League

Following the amendment of the BOF rules, the SOA Board has reflected on the change to the age classes and decided that it would be appropriate for all Scottish events to adopt the changes within the new BOF rules for all Scottish Championships, Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) and Scottish Orienteering Urban League events.

However, the SOA Board considered the feedback which has previously been received from Juniors in respect of the step up for M/W16 age classes in the Scottish Orienteering League (SOL) – long distance events. Juniors and parents have previously fed back that, at a time when they are physically developing at potentially very different rates, the step up from Light Green courses (Technical Difficulty 4) in the M14 age classes to the Blue course (Technical Difficulty 5) for M16 could be very large for some juniors. The amendment of the BOF rules has meant that M16 continue to be classified as running Blue courses but W16s are classified as running Short Blue courses.

The Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival is held annually in Scotland, usually somewhere within the central belt. The event provides an opportunity for all pupils from P5 up to S6 across Scotland to come together and enjoy orienteering in the outdoors, and in many cases experience something new. Whilst this is a sporting event, the focus is on participation rather than performance and all pupils are welcome. They can run, jog or walk as well as choose to compete individually or as a pair.

The event is usually organised by a Scottish Orienteering Association (SOA) member club, in a different area each year. It is supported by local club volunteers and overseen by the Scottish Schools Orienteering Association as well as the SOA. The SSOF is designed to be an accessible and inclusive introduction to orienteering for newcomers whilst having an element of competition for those that want to race. The courses are set to be appropriate for each age group, with time penalties for wrong or missing controls to ensure everybody gets a result – nobody gets disqualified. There is a focus on fun with plenty of downtime for playing and even an orienteering maze

2026

Venue: Beecraigs Country Park, Linlithgow

Date: Thursday 4th June 2026

Entries: Please head to the SSOA website for more information, entry details and forms for completion. A list of FAQs can be found here. Any issues, get in touch with louise@scottish-orienteering.org

Pupils are expected to have had some experience of orienteering before attending the festival, ideally having participated in at least 3 orienteering training sessions or events, either in school, through a club or at a local event. The ‘Let’s Get Started Orienteering’ resource on the SOA website is a great place to start, or if you require more support or information please get in touch with us at info@scottish-orienteering.org.

We can also provide in-house training and CPD opportunities for teachers and support staff, such as our Introducing Orienteering Course. Please get in touch if you are interested in this opportunity or have any further questions.

Previous events

Results from previous years can be found on the SSOA website.

A large number of Scottish (and Scotland-based) athletes have been selected for various international competitions this summer, and with the World Championships team yet to be selected, there are likely to be more. This is a testament to the excellent orienteering and coaching available to athletes in Scotland.

The World University Orienteering Championships will take place in Bulgaria in August, with a team heavily dominated by Edinburgh University athletes – Rachel Brown EUOC, Fiona Bunn EUOC, Eilidh Campbell EUOC, Isobel Howard EUOC, Niamh Hunter EUOC, Jim Bailey EUOC, David Bunn EUOC, Euan Tryner EUOC – and also several other alumni and native Scots – Peter Molloy FVO, Freddie Carcas INT, and Eddie Narbett INT.

An overview of the March Community Conversation!

Community conversations bring members together each month to share experiences, successes, challenges and ideas on an allocated topic. This month’s conversation focused on development, funnelling newcomers into becoming regular orienteers and retaining members. Community Conversations are open discussions so provide a great platform to see how other clubs work with their members and what learnings could potentially be taken forward into your own club.

Mary Williams, the SOA Development Director, opened the discussion and introduced our special guest from Lakeland Orienteering Club, Carol McNeill. Carol provided an overview of the work their development officer, Kath Savage, has been doing. Further details on this are later in the article, as well as some materials that LOC have been using. The other key discussion topics were the newcomer experience, adult and junior progression including red courses and the STAR award, and opportunities for socialising.

Below is an overview of the key outputs of the most recent discussion from a variety of themes.

Going Forward into 2023

Hello and a warm welcome to 2023. The Development Team had an exciting yet challenging 2022. At the start of the year we were understaffed then lost Sarah Dunn as Development Manager. However in the autumn Heidi Ross joined the team enabling us to be a full staff team again. We have supported projects including: Dundee Active Schools with Tay and Earlston High School with the Roxburgh Reivers along with summer camps and work to find out more from young people about what keeps them in the sport. We are excited for 2023 to take on new development projects and continue our work from 2022. 

Find out who are the 3 final candidates and who shines in MAROC

In early May the Scotland team headed to the World Schools Championships Orienteering in Otepää, Estonia, and you can now read the full, detailed reports written by Angus Ivory and Iris MacMillan.