Tag: 2025

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.

The third installment of the 2025 Community Conversation programme is on Monday 3rd March at 1930 and you can now sign up to attend.

The discussion will be once again be on the theme of development, but this time the focus will be on how to retain and progress current members. Mary Williams, the Development Director, will be chairing the discussion. This will be a great opportunity to share experience, and discuss successes, challenges, and ideas for practical support that SOA could usefully provide for clubs. Perhaps you’ve come across some great tools that have helped achieve positive results, or have gained some valuable learning from things you’ve tried that would be of interest to other clubs.

The Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival is back for 2025 and this year will be held at Pittencrieff Park in Dunfermline. It will be on Thursday 5th June so make sure to save the date! A huge thanks are extended to Kingdom of Fife Orienteers for giving permission to use this area and for providing the organiser and planner for the event.

Well February is always a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to weather and this year’s CompassSport Cup/ Trophy qualifier date (23rd February )was no different. Tayside Orienteering Club (TAY) had to content with weather warnings of wind and rain, trees landing on control sites and reports of those travelling from the north considering forecasts of high winds with rain, thunder and lightening for their journey.

2024 saw Edinburgh hosting elite athletes from across the globe for the Sprint World Championships in an event that has been described by some as potentially being the best ever.  

We are looking to ensure that the success of the World Championships is built upon through the new  Scottish Orienteering 4 year strategy.  This strategy represents a collective vision for the future of orienteering in Scotland which aims to support the vision of orienteering as a thriving sport for all generations through the key themes: changing perceptions, engaging experiences, lifelong pathways and foundations for success. An outline of the Scottish Orienteering Strategy can be found here.

The evolution of the Scottish Orienteering Strategy confirmed that clubs are the essential backbone of our sport.  The implementation of this strategy will be a team effort across the Scottish orienteering community with everyone contributing and the SOA development focus being on connecting and supporting clubs.  Over the years the SOA Development Fund has supported Scottish clubs wishing to undertake projects with the aim of developing the sport. As we look to continue to build on the new Scottish Orienteering Strategy we are therefore focusing the current SOA Development funding on projects which a) support the expansion of the sport within the 20 to 40 age group b) continued development of orienteering participation following WOC 2024, and c) within clubs who saw a dramatic decline in membership as a result of Covid. We are asking clubs to come forward with any proposals which build on these themes.

To find out more about this year’s fund, head to the SOA Development Fund page where you will also find the link to the application form.

The deadline for applications is 21st March 2025.

Photos from FVO’s work with the Donaldson’s Trust that was funded by the 2024 SOA Development Fund.

ESOC’s ‘Events in a Box’ facilitated easy access into orienteering for newcomers near to where they live and was funded by the 2024 SOA Development Fund.

Make sure you don’t miss out on any selection opportunities this year. We have gathered them all together in one place.

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 and recruiting newcomers. Community Conversations are open discussions so provide a great platform to see how other clubs work with newcomers and what learnings could potentially be taken forward into your own club.

This year’s Scottish Night Championships gave everyone the opportunity to practise their headtorch orienteering skills prior to the British Night Championships this weekend. East Lothian Orienteers kindly hosted the event at Balgone Estate, just south of North Berwick.

A big thank you to everyone who participated in our first monthly online Community Conversation of the year, held earlier this week on the topic of Communications & Marketing.

A vital part of SOA’s function is to bring together people from across the Scottish orienteering community, and these monthly sessions aim to provide regular opportunities for sharing experiences and discussing successes, challenges, and ideas. Each session has a different focus but with the common goal of exploring things clubs are doing or would like to do to develop and promote orienteering, as well as ideas for practical things that SOA could do to support clubs, particularly as we are now embarking on the new four year strategy period Looking to the Future – the new four-year strategy for Scottish Orienteering 2025-2029

The fixtures calendar for the next year has been finalised and we are very grateful to all those clubs who have volunteered to host the key dates in the Scottish Orienteering calendar in 2025. To avoid disappointment, get them in your diary now!

The Scottish Inter Club Championship has now been in its revised format for two years now. We try to select twelve different events spread around the country with one in each month. We are as ever looking for feedback on the format and suggestions how it could be improved. Please email fixtures@scottish-orienteering.org or nikki@scottish-orienteering.org with any comments before 12th January 2025.