News
Many thanks and congratulations to the WAOC Junior Team (and their parents) who travelled to Tankersley Wood in Barnsley at the weekend to take part in the first Daybreak Relay race in the 2018 Peter Palmer Competition for Junior Orienteers.
The Junior team were a real credit to the club and each member applied themselves with enthusiasm and determination to the task in hand. Unfortunately, although the WAOC team were first to the finish in the Daybreak Relay, a mispunch on one leg denied the team the trophy that they deserved ! However, despite the disappointment everybody enjoyed the event and the Junior team are determined to bring the trophy back to Cambridge next year !
It is striking that out of 350 participants at the Wimpole Parkrun on 8th September, 3 of the top 6 age graded performances (and 4 of the top 11) were achieved by WAOC members.
8 WAOC members in total are listed in the results, 6 of whom finished in the fastest 50% of finishers.
From which we would love to be able to conclude that joining WAOC is good for your PB. We can't be certain of this of course, but for anyone out there looking to improve, it surely must be worth a try....
Ursula has achieved 3rd place in the W80 class in the British Sprint Champs at Bath University. The campus provided a suitable technical challenge for all competitors, with route choices spanning multiple levels in the central complex.
Congratulations to Helen Bickle, overall winner of the W35S category at the Lakes 5 Days.
A number of other WAOC members were highly placed in the overall scores:
Well done Dil Wetherill, 3rd in M55S; Noreen Ives, 3rd in W65S; and Bruce Marshall, 4th in M65S.
Full results can be found here.
On Saturday 14th, a number of WAOC members led by Hazel organised a timed maze as part of the Cambridge Big Weekend Sports Zone. Over 40 people took part (mainly children).
It was a long day on Parkers Piece starting with setup starting around 9am (all cars had to be off-site by 11am). The event itself was open for 5 hours. It was quiet at the start (unsurprisingly given the old adage about mad dogs and Englishmen), but by 3pm there was a queue of children wanting to have a go. A special shout goes out to Summer who did every single maze course available even the extra-difficult mirrored courses. We'd love to see you all at our next event at Milton Country Park on 28th. Thanks to Hazel, Mike, Stephen, Bruce and Maria for their hard work.
Try This First
Maze X
Maze Y
0.1km
Maze Z
A-Mazing
B-Muzed
Ezam 1
Ezam 2
Ezam 3
Stephen and Jason represented WAOC at the Histon & Impington Community Feast of Sport in baking heat on the 1st July.
A maze with 4 different courses was built and a small 700m 10-control taster event around the recreation ground was planned by Stephen. The maze was constructed on a slightly larger scale than usual with controls higher up on stakes to be as inclusive as possible because of the festival being backed by Power 2 Inspire. No wheelchair users took part, but we did have a boy with a broken arm!
The blistering heat led to a rather lackadaisical audience for the event, but ice cream sales were brisk. The children (and Jason) who took part all enjoyed it, with fierce competition to get the top spot on each course. Some children (and Jason) even had to be dragged away by their parents at closing time.
Results for HI Festival of Sport Maze and Taster - 01-Jul-2018
Here are the final standings for the 2018 Evening League all 4 events.
Individual event results are here:
WAOC had four winners in the Essex and Suffolk Schools Orienteering League (ESSOL) for this academic year. Alex Darwin won the Year 3/4 Boys league, Hebe Darwin came 2nd in the Year 5/6 Girls, Jemima Borrill came 2nd in the Year 7/8 Girls and Daniel Hague came 2nd in the Year 9/10 Boys.
Club members can now receive a monthly email newsletter giving reminders on forthcoming events and a summary of club related news. The June edition has recently been issued. If you are not receiving this, but would like to, please
email "publicity" at "waoc.org.uk".
Corrections and Clarifications: The June newsletter stated the last event in the Evening League would be in Impington, but that event has already happened. The event at IVC in August is a Summer Series event, not related to the Evening League.
In case you did not know, WAOC has a twitter account:
Club Captain Janet Cronk, together with Sue and Peter Woods, travelled up to Morpeth on 9-10 June for a weekend of orienteering organised by NATO. This included representing the club in the British Mixed Sprint Relay competition at Pegswood on the Saturday, followed by a much longer individual race on the Sunday, which as part of the UKOL garners league points for the club.
Look out for a write up of our experience in the next JabberWAOC.
The photo here of the mass start was taken by Janet, who assisted in the setting up of the event on the day and who was marshalling before preparing for her third-leg run.
Here is a link to a Guardian article with an interview with Martin Bagness and a glimpse of what's in store at the Lakes 5 days this August.
WAOC can pay for members to qualify as first aiders in return for occasionally providing first aid coverage at events, typically sharing with another first aider so that both can run. If you can help with first aid, please contact Helen Hague using the Convenor email (contacts).
Suitable courses are run by St Johns Ambulance and also ITC First. Check with Helen for prior approval of the cost of the first aid course. If you already have a qualification, for example through work, and are willing to be on the first aider list, then please let Helen know.
Six members of WAOC travelled to Scotland and took part in the British Long Distance Championships that was held in the grounds of Balmoral Castle on Saturday 19th May. Some great orienteering was experienced in a technically challenging area and congratulations must go to Ursula Oxburgh, who came 2nd on W80, and Peter Haynes who was 13th on M60L.
The following day, the WAOC ‘Mixed Ad-hoc’ relay team comprising Janet Cronk, Peter Haynes and James Haynes were delighted to finish in the Bronze Medal position at the British Orienteering Relay Championships. The races were held in Torphantrick Woods, near Ballater.
We have an unexpectedly pleasing outcome to report following the loss of a couple of control boxes on the Love’s Farm race at St Neots on 12 May.
If you took part in the event at St Neots, you will know that two controls were vandalised and the boxes lost. After this was reported in the local press, a number of local residents contacted us, offering to pay for the costs of replacement. We were very heartened by these spontaneous gestures, and since we had intended that the proceeds from the event would we given to the Headway Cambridgeshire charity, we want this goodwill to benefit the charity first and foremost.
We have asked everyone who contacted us to make a donation direct to Headway Cambridgeshire, using their online donation page.
We have yet to finalise the accounts from the event but any costs arising from the loss of the SI boxes will be absorbed by the club so as not to affect the amount we can donate. The net proceeds look like being around £400 and this will be donated in full to Headway. This does include some personal donations made by participants on the day.
This does not include substantive additional donations made by the residents of St Neots. Anyone reading this who wishes to support Headway Cambridgeshire further is encouraged to visit their website, as below, and make a personal donation. This can be anonymous or not, as you wish.
https://www.headway-cambs.org....
PS - This is what the missing control boxes look like. If anyone finds one of our missing controls, please get in touch. We would be very glad to see them again!
Huge congratulations and many thanks to all the Juniors who came to Danbury Park to run for WAOC in the Yvette Baker heat on Sunday 13th May.
Every member of the team completed their course so we had the maximum 9 scores possible from our team of 9. All the juniors put in impressive performances, there were some good solid runs from the more experienced juniors but also some excellent runs on the yellow course by the younger members of the team.
Congratulations to
Helen Bickle: 1st - W35S
Hazel Bickle: 1st - W65S
Andrew Stemp, running for DUOC : 3rd - M21L, achieving a championship time.
Several WAOC members won their classes at the East Anglian Championships at Writtle Forest today (25th).
M10: Alex Darwin
M16: Sam Hague
M21: Andrew Stemp
W45: Camilla Darwin
M45: Stephen Borrill
M50: Dil Wetherill
W60: Janet Cronk
W65: Noreen Ives
M70: Mike Bickle
M75: Chris Morley
Thanks to all who braved the wintery conditions on Saturday to go out on a lamppost safari (or marker post safari for the junior course).
The results do depend somewhat on luck, as I did not reveal which of the original control sites had the maps showing the locations of the extra controls. In retrospect I should probably have added that information.
The results are are as follows:
Junior 30 minute score
Daniel Hague 28:50 210 points (including extras), no penalty Score 210
Caitlin Dunning 28:16 100 points, no penalty Score 100
Senior 45 minute score
Stephen Borrill 42:44 290 points (including extras) no penalty Score 290
Bruce Marshall 42:32 180 points (including extras) no penalty Score 180
Sean Blanchflower 33:56 160 points no penalty Score 160
Sue Woods 44:49 150 points (including extras) no penalty Score 150
The awards were given by Paul Beckett, Chair of EAOA, after the completion of the CompassSport Qualifier match. A rain shower just before the presentation explains the profusion of waterproofs amongst spectators and recipients.
WAOC winners on hand to receive their awards included Hebe Darwin, Janet Cronk, Hazel Bickle, Mike and Seonaid Dudley, and Peter Woods.
A farewell was made to Ben Windsor at the clubnight on 7th March. Chris Morley, who was WAOC Chairman when we first met Ben about 8 years ago, summarised the excellent work he has done for the club and presented Ben with a mug which featured Ben's maps.
A thank you to Ben Windsor, Level2 coach.
We are sorry to have to tell you all that Ben Windsor and Zuzka are moving on to London for work reasons on 21st March and will no longer be with the club at our training nights.
Ben did may things for many years for our club although absolutely a member of CUOC from coming up to Cambridge as a Maths undergraduate. As he leaves in 2018 to join a London club I am equally absolutely assured that DRONGO will be his number one club.
In the early days of clubnights (organised and overseen by Caroline, Ursula, and Chris), Ben was the regular (every week) coach to the juniors and to them was the image of our club. Whilst Peter Allen and Helen Bickle coordinated later on Ben enabled us to expand our clubnight orienteering by mapping many sites in and around Cambridge.
Time passes and now Ben joins another part of the orienteering community and he will no longer be seen with us helping at WAOC events or at the PuntO as a member of the usually winning team (see photo below). However memories remain and we will always have the many moments learning skills at training evenings from maps usually made by Ben himself of Cambridge colleges or University sites.
I hope that when members of the Club meet Ben at JK, Lakes 5 days, or Scottish six days or even perhaps at events in Europe we will be able to join with him perhaps at a club dinner. We certainly wish Ben and Zuzka every orienteering success and happiness in the future.