An exciting new sporting event for primary schools that was brought in 2 years ago was held last Friday when 88 children from 6 of the 8 primaries in the Forres area converged on Grant Park for the 2008 Primary Schools Orienteering Championships.

Like previous years, this competition was run as a joint venture between Moray Active Schools and the local Moravian and RAF Kinloss Orienteering Clubs. Active Schools Coordinator, Rosalyn Carruthers, says: “Orienteering has enormous potential for getting more children active – particularly in Moray where we have ideal terrain and a very supportive club in Moravian Orienteers. By joining with the club to provide events for schools we hope to introduce this dynamic activity to a younger generation and create an activity pathway – whereby children are given a taster of the activity and then directed to the club sessions where they can get more involved with the sport.” This event has also proved to be a perfect way of introducing them to map reading in a fun, active and exciting way. Orienteering is, of course, very much an athletic sport and on Friday the children had to find their way as fast as possible round 14 checkpoints on one of two different courses using a map specially produced for the event. The B course was 1700 metres long while the A course was a bit more tricky and slightly longer at 2200 metres, including a big 250 foot run uphill to take in Nelson’s Tower.

Orienteering is quite a difficult skill to master, and anyone who can get round an orienteering course without making a mistake is doing well, no matter what time you do, and 74 out of the 88 runners managed it. But even those who missed the odd checkpoint by taking a wrong turning will have learned from their experience, and every child taking part managed to find their way back to the finish in a respectable time. Particular congratulations went to Alves, the smallest school taking part, whose 8 competitors all managed to complete their course with no errors, despite not being the fastest.

But at the top end of the scale there were some extremely good performances. The most outstanding of all was by the Applegrove pairing of Alex and Lauren Allan of who completed the Girls B course in a record time of 11 minutes 41 and 11 minutes 58 respectively, a full minute ahead of the fastest boys. This really was an incredible performance by these 2 girls, knocking 2 minutes of the previous best for this course by either a boy or a girl. The favourite for the Boys A Course title was Andrew Barr of Dyke Primary. Andrew, who was a member of the Moravian Orienteering Club team that came within 2 seconds of winning this year’s British Championships junior relay race, did not disappoint, and with team-mate Kieran McCarroll pushed Kinloss’s Grant Welsh into 3^rd place. Grant has also been doing a lot of orienteering with the local club, so it was great credit to the Pilmuir pairing of Gregor Barron and Andrew Hanton, both completely new to the sport, who finished only a minute further back. Two other first-timers who did extremely well were Harry Bazalgette and Finlay Rae, both of Kinloss, who both beat the previous boys record on the B course to establish a 40-second cushion over Colm Wickham in 3^rd.

Experience also showed on the Girls A course where another regular orienteer, Kinloss’s Catherine Ellis together with team-mate Abigail Russell overcame the challenge of Applegrove’s Zoe Hayward and Miriam Scott to take 1^st and 2nd by a 30-second margin.

The all-important team result was decided by adding up the fastest 2 times for each school’s runners in each of the 4 categories, and the team trophy went to Applegrove for the 3^rd successive year. Even though they only had one individual champion out of the 4 categories, their strength in depth ensured a 22-minute winning margin over local rivals Anderson’s. But for a couple of navigation errors by Kinloss and Dyke runners, either of these schools might well have taken 2^nd place, but the skill in orienteering is to run only as fast as you can navigate. Errors usually prove fatal!

Many of the leading runners had benefited from attending training evenings held on the previous 2 days run by the local club. As always, practice makes perfect and it was very rewarding for the organisers to see over half of the competitors coming along to the practice sessions, with some of them running the practice course 3 times over the two days. The sport of orienteering is rapidly gaining in popularity in Scotland, and the beauty of this sport is that competitions for beginners, and particularly young children, can take place alongside races for the seasoned athletes that the sport attracts at the top end. Families can take part as a group at walking pace in the same area of forest as an elite-standard British champion running flat out. There are events within an hour’s drive of Forres most weekend from now until November, and all of them offer child and family-friendly courses, as well as much tougher alternatives for those who enjoy a serious physical and technical challenge in some of the country’s wild and unspoilt areas of forest and moorland. You can find out more by logging on to www.scottish-orienteering.org, or by visiting the local club’s website www.moravianorienteering.org

Meanwhile, the Active Schools/Moravian Orienteers partnership will soon be putting the Lossiemouth and Elgin primaries to the test when they hold their own championships in Roseisle on 22^nd September and Cooper Park on 3^rd October, and tentative plans are in the pipeline for a Moray-wide event to be held next Spring. The next Moravian club event is at Lossie Forest on Saturday afternoon, 27^th September. Full details are available on their website.