SYO held another successful newcomer and schools' league event on Saturday 12th March at Forge Dam, part of the Outdoor City Weekender. The gorgeous Spring day ensured a good turn out and led to the cafe doing a roaring trade in ice-creams! We recorded 321 runs - a record! Hope to see as many of you as possible at the 7th event in the series at Parkwood Springs on Saturday 9th April. Thanks to everyone who helped and to Ricky Baxter for taking the photos - there are more on our facebook page.

Last weekend saw the beginning of the main orienteering competition season for 2016. The weekend began with the British Night Championships at Cademan and Thringstone Woods in Leicestershire, which was previously used for the British Middle Championships in 2008. The courses were physically and technically demanding; producing extremely worthy champions from highly competitive fields.

Congratulations to the 4 SYO British Night Champions: Dave Peel (M50L), Tim Tett (M55L), Pippa Dakin (W18L) and Jenny Peel (W45L). Well done also to the 6 silver medalists: Pete Tryner (M40L), Charlie Adams (M50L), Nick Lightfoot (M55L), Peter Gorvett (M65L), Henry Marston (M70L) and Louise Adams (W18L) and also Michael Adams who was 3rd in M20L

  On Sunday it was the turn of the Midland Championships in Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire. Courses were fast and furious through beautiful runnable wood and moorland. Well done to Kim Baxter who was 1st on W21 Elite, Richard Guillaume 1st on M35L and Tim Tett 1st on M55L. Congratulations also to Nick Barrable (2nd M21E), Andrew Preston (2nd M35L), Martin Ward (2nd M45L), Pippa Dakin (2nd W18E), Robbie Lightfoot (2nd M10A), Pauline Tryner (3rd W40L), Tim Wiegand (1st M45S), Louise Preston (1st W21V) and Monika Cooper (1st W70S).

 

Four members of SYO members were selected to run for England in the Interland competition in Belgium at the weekend. They all acquitted themselves well achieving some great results. Pippa Dakin’s victory in the W20 class was particularly impressive. Well done Pippa! Congratulations also to Charlie Adams - 2nd in M50, Nick Barrable – 5th in M21 and Lucy Wiegand 8th in W40. England finished 2nd to the overall winners, Belgium.

Monday 3rd February saw the start of the new indoor coaching sessions at Tapton School for our older SYO juniors (M/W12 and up).

The 1st session began with a challenging map simplification exercise. Participants were asked to jog for a minute. Meanwhile their partners looked at a map, deciding their route to a control; which they then had to draw their route onto a blank piece of paper. The pairs then swapped over and this continued until they had each drawn routes for all the controls.

The second exercise was a relay race using the SI equipment, which focused on the juniors’ knowledge of map symbols; although it’s unsure as to whether there were any overall victors as there seemed to be a lot of mispunches!  The session finished with a map discussion, analysing previous races and planning route choice to controls.

The next session is on Monday 22nd Feb from 7-8pm. If you are a junior club member M/W12 plus and would like to attend, please email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
 

Orienteers from several Sheffield schools, including many SYO members, enjoyed success last weekend at the British Schools Orienteering Championships.

50 pupils from the city’s schools travelled to Sandringham in Norfolk to compete against schools from around the country.

There were individual victories for Euan Tryner, Hunter’s Bar in Boys Year 6 and Imogen Pieters, Sheffield High in Girls Year 5. Max Mobus, Tapton was 3rd in Boys Year 7 and Naomi Thornton 2^nd in Girls Year 7. Just missing out on a podium position, Seb Mobus, Tapton was 5th in B9, Ellen Harthog, Nether Green 6th in G5 and Ryan Elliott, High Storrs 8th in B10.

In the team competition Nethergreen won the Year 5 Girls competition (Eleanor Salmon, Isabelle Hampton, Ellen Hartog, Rania Maaranen and Rosie Shrimpton) closely followed by Sheffield High School in second (Imogen Pieters, Hannah Taylor and Elizabeth Chung) with Hunters Bar in 5^th (Freya Tryner, Millie Norman and Alice Stephenson). Hunters Bar (Euan Tryner, Conrad Reuber and Eli Hayes were 3rd in the year 6 boys competition, while Westways were 4^th, just off the podium, in Year 6 Girls (Miranda Gregory, Isla Fowler, Meg Withington, Ruby Ramsell, Erin Flannery and Ava Hewson).

Good team performances by Nethergreen, Hunters Bar and Westways saw them finish 3^rd, 4^th and 5^th overall in the Primary Schools competition.

More photos on SYO's facebook page.

The JHI was run on Magilligan Dunes on the Northern Irish coast on 24th and 25th October.  This is very technical orienteering at the same location as the British Championships in 2002.

Pippa won the W18 class for England on the Saturday individual and had the fastest leg on the last leg in the women's relay on Sunday.  Unfortunately, though England were ahead after Saturday's individuals, Scotland edged past on the relays to win overall.

As you may have noticed, South Yorkshire Orienteers has a shiny new website design. The old site design was introduced 5 years ago and was showing its age, especially in terms of support for mobile devices. According to the analytics used on the site over 40% of all page views come from mobile devices (phones and tablets)!

The new design offers vastly improved support for mobile devices, improved accessibility for those users with screen readers and sports a cleaner, simpler structure. All the content from the preivious design can be found on the new design and existing links should still work.

We hope you like the new design, that it works well and that it makes it easier for you to use the SYO website. If you have any comments, positive or negative, don't hesitate to get in touch.

CompassSport Cup Final - SYO finish a credible 3rd place, just 4 points behind 2nd place. A great result considering we had 7 or 8 of our best runners unavailable on the day. Apart from our one course winner - well done Pippa Dakin on Junior Women - and a good 2nd from Pete Gorvett, notable performances, i.e. those who ran better than Tim had expected, were Michael Adams 3rd on Short Brown and Dominic Dakin 3rd on Orange Men.

Congratulations also to Louise Adams for winning the Golden Boot award for the fastest woman on the run-in.

It was great to see our new juniors making the trip all the way to the Lakes to compete in their first really big competition. Well done to Alex and Ryan Elliot, Callum Veitch, Imogen Pieters, Rachel Turner, Max and Seb Mobus.  Looking good for the future was the performance of those who were competing against much older children:  in particular Alex, Imogen and Ryan, who were all not far from being among the SYO counters.

And a big well done and thanks to those of you who made up our top 25 scorers - Pippa, Pete Gorvett, Michael, Charlie, Nick B, Mark C, Dom, Kim, Alastair, Euan, Nick L, Nic B, Hilary, Sheila, Colin, Brian, Louise, Martin, Jaimie, Pete T, John, Richard, Jim and Clive .

Tim Tett has a prize for all the scorers - control card holders. They are a little small so if you don't want yours let him know as our juniors can make good use of them.

Thanks to Wendy Carlyle for the excellent photos, more here.

More than 60 adults and children joined the SYO coaching session on Saturday afternoon and as the hordes descended on a rather misty and atmospheric Redmires, the mushroom pickers and wild campers must have been wondering what on earth was going on.

Over the weekend of the 19^th & 20^th of September AIRE hosted the Northern Championships, the Yorkshire Championships and the Senior Home Internationals up in the beautiful Yorkshire Dales.

On Saturday it was the turn of the Northern Champs and the SHI individual day. Competitors were rewarded with glorious weather and stunning views across Malham Tarn. Courses were technically challenging amongst the limestone pavements, particularly for the younger juniors. Particular congratulations go to SYO’s 3 Northern Champions: Euan Tryner in M12, Peter Gorvett in M65 and Pippa Dakin in W18. Other results of note were M10A 3^rd Jamie Lightfoot, M14A 2^nd Dom Dakin, M16B 1^st Ryan Elliot, M40L 2^nd Pete Tryner, M45S 1^st Tony Udris, M50L 3^rd Charlie Adams, M60S 1^st Neil Sprot, W10A 2^nd Freya Tryner & W65S 1^st Pauline Rosser.

Representing SYO in the SHIs, Kim Baxter was 8^th on W21E and Aidan Smith 2^nd on M20E. Despite England’s best efforts, Scotland led at the end of the individuals by 8 points.

Sunday saw competitors venture across the Dales to Hawkswick Clowder; not a new area but part of Kilnsey under a new name. Courses were both physically and technically challenging, with some great route choice legs on the longer courses. Congratulations to SYO’s new Yorkshire Champions: W10 Freya Tryner, M14 Dominic Dakin, W18 Louise Adams, W21 Lucy Wiegand, M21 Nic Barber and M65 Peter Gorvett.

Fast and furious racing in the SHI relays led to a closely fought contest between England and Scotland, particularly in the Men’s race; but Scotland eventually emerged victorious. This meant an overall win for Scotland, with England in 2^nd, Ireland in 3^rd and Wales in 4^th.