Moravian Orienteers

Congratulations to four of our Juniors: Michael Bishenden, Sophie Howard, Kate McLuckie and Finlay McLuckie, who have been selected for the British Orienteering Talent Squad Scotland for the forthcoming  2023/24 season. The talent squads aim to develop 15-18 year olds beyond the Regional Squad level by providing a programme of training, education and coaching which takes a holistic view of their development as athletes, orienteers and individuals. It encourages the athletes to take responsibility for their own plans to improve their orienteering and hopefully acts as a source of motivation and enjoyment for them. The British Orienteering Performance Director, Bernie Dietzig said:‘I would like to congratulate the athletes on their selection to the British Orienteering talent squads. We are again excited to offer a comprehensive program for the athletes this season. The talent program will deliver a number of workshops and camps, which will help our young athletes to fulfil their potential and prepare to compete on the international stage’

Our Darnaway event day dawned warm and sunny and there was a good turnout, despite all our junior stars being away for the weekend. A big thank you from Morag (organiser) to everyone for helping to ensure the event was another Moravian success.

I really appreciated so many offers of help and the time that you all gave either before or after your run (or both in some cases!) Thanks too to those of you who came along, even though you weren’t participating in the event today.  Every single one of you helped to ensure that the event ran smoothly.

A particular thank you to Ewart Scott who stepped in as Controller at fairly short notice and has spent many hours in the forest in the run up to today’s event.

Controllers Comments:

Thanks to Moravian for asking me to control their regional event at Darnaway. My last time in Darnaway was in 2015 during the S6D, some of the area seemed more runnable then.

Peter did a great job with the courses, given the fact there is a line feature within a relatively short distance from every control. Unavoidable for this area. It’s not easy planning highly technical courses in such areas.

Congratulations to Kathryn Barr (W21) and Isobel Howard (W20) who have been selected to represent Scotland at the Senior Home Internationals to be held in South Wales on the weekend of 9th/10th September.  The individual event will be held on Merthyr Common, and the relays the following day on Clydach Terrace. Kathryn heads off to Canada later in September to take up a position in a Vets practice in Calgary.  Good luck Kathryn, and good luck both in South Wales! 

All club members are invited to our Annual General Meeting, to be held at  The Club Room, Altyre on Saturday 19th August at 1.00 pm or as soon as possible after the Retro O event.  The agenda for the meeting can be found here.  We would be pleased to receive nominations from members to stand for committee positions - in particular, we currently do not have a Secretary or a Fixtures officer.  We look forward to seeing you there.
Rob Parkinson, Acting secretary

A4 Design & Print Northern Urban League

Many thanks to everyone for supporting our first Northern Urban League Series. Special thanks go to our sponsor, A4 Design & Print, all the organisers and planners, Michael Bishenden for crunching the results, and to our winners of the long and short courses.

After combining the best three results from the four races, INVOC secured the top three spots on each course. Well done to Rory, Laurence, Wullie, Douglas, Iona and Hazel.  The final results table covering all four races is (below/attached):

Andrew and Colin - Series Organisers

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The League positions after 3 events can be seen below:

The final event in the series is this Wednesday 28th June, limited EOD available.

Congratulations to all the Moravians who competed in the Scottish Championships near Oban at the end of May.  The club came away with three gold medals on the individual day - Isobel (W18E), Eddie (M70L) and Rob (M65L) - and two bronze medals - Kate (W16A) and Finlay (M16A).  The following day we placed 1st in the 11+ category (Andrew, Michael and Finlay) and 2nd in the 20+ category (Kate, Eddie and Rob). Margaret took some great photos, which can be seen on our Facebook page. A full set of podium photos were taken by Nikki, and can be seen on the SOA Facebook page.

Full individual results can be seen here. Relay results can bee seen here. 

Scottish Sprint Championships
Recently we saw yet more Moravians on the podium. You can see the four medallists on the right. Andrew gold and Colin silver - 11 seconds apart in the Men's Super Vets Class, Morag was the bronze medallist in the Women's Vets and Eddie was also bronze in the men's Ultra Vets. The event was run round an estate in Kirkintilloch, followed by a bonus urban event round a local wildlife reserve.

The Club committee has agreed that grants are available from club funds to support Junior members attendance at residential Junior Regional Orienteering Squad training tours and competitions as Juniors representing Scotland and GB.  Applications should be made on this form to the club treasurer (finance@mor.scot) in advance of the activity, and to meet the deadlines of either 31st March or 30th June.

Congratulations to the Moravian orienteers who took part in the Scottish Nights O  championships at Balmoral recently.  This year seven Moravian orienteers (McLuckies, Howards and Rob P) charged up their head torches and travelled over to Royal Deeside, to run in the forest on the Balmoral Estate.   The terrain at Balmoral is steep and rocky in places, and because of recent storms some trees were down. That gave the event planner Nick Hale some headaches but he still managed to produce some challenging courses. Thanks to MAROC for a great event. The weather during the evening was cold but dry, but finding your way around Balmoral in the dark is quite a challenge, but the woods have one particular helping feature - the Royal Cairns.  The area we were running in included Princess Louise’s, Princess Helena’s and Prince Arthur’s cairns.  These proved to be very helpful when deep in the forest at night, not quite sure where you are!

Finlay won M16 with a dominant run, Rob won MUltraVet - his 1st Scottish title, retaining the trophy for the club won previous by Eddie Harwood and Alan Halliday (twice), Kate was 2nd on W16 and Morag 3rd on WVet. Well done everyone!