Volunteers’ Week Features: Young Orienteer of the Year Short-list and MAROC

Find out who are the 3 final candidates and who shines in MAROC

Young Orienteer of the Year Award is designated to a young member, 21 years old and under, who has shown outstanding contribution to the sport and their club during 2019. The winner of this award, sponsored by Tulloch Homes , will be announced at the Jamie Stevenson Alternative 14 June.

We are pleased to say there were 8 nominations put forward across the clubs and our short list includes these three for these reasons:

Hannah Kingham – MOR

Hannah has worked with the Milne’s Active Schools Coordinator in Fochabers to set up and run some after-school orienteering sessions at Mosstodloch and Milne’s Primary Schools. She lead the sessions first in the school playground and then planned and set up courses in the woods for later sessions. She first ran a block of sessions at Mosstodloch in the autumn term and then another block subsequently at Milne’s. In both cases she had to race from her school in order to get across to the primaries for 4pm. It is particularly impressive to see Hannah lead on this initiative without the support of any local adult orienteers.

Angus Ivory – INT

Angus is a willing volunteer and has been involved in local event planning and organisation. He worked very hard developing orienteering in his school culminating in 4 of his school mates developing their skills to a level where their team were selected to represent Scotland at the ISF World Schools orienteering championship in 2019 which took place in Estonia. He has gained his orienteering young leaders award and most recently during lock down has learnt how to map, producing a map of a local area. He developed this futher and then learnt how to use maprun, creating a training course on his map.

Matthew Gooch – MAROC

Matthew contributes to the sport not only in his performance at events but equally as an active volunteer. Away from the forest he makes a significant contribution to Maroc in his role on the committee as the club’s Computing Officer. He oversees the upkeep and logistics of the club’s event timing equipment and is currently managing the club’s transition from Emit to SI. He also plans and organises events. In March he was awarded Aberdeenshire 2019 Young Sportsman of the Year. Matthew’s contribution to Scottish and club orienteering over the past few years has been immense. His competitive results speak for themselves but for someone so young to take-on and deliver such a major committee role with such confidence at this important time for the club is outstanding.

Shining Volunteers for MAROC

Katja Neuman – Katja is a very approachable and willing volunteer who always makes herself available. She has been helping out with coaching since joining the club with her family a few years ago and completed her L1 coach award last autumn. She now regularly coaches at club training sessions and took the lead role in January. She also has the role of co-ordinator for the Northern area junior squad, joint organising the inter-area competition on Deeside last year. Her work to develop the squad, especially through social opportunities as an integral part of orienteering, is much valued. In the last year she has helped with numerous other club events and is a stalwart of the Maroc committee, providing much appreciated insight from a junior and family viewpoint. She is a real asset to the club!

Clare Whitehead – Clare is a much-valued, friendly and approachable volunteer. Her principal volunteering role in the club is putting together and distributing the two-weekly emailed newsletter which she does in a very reliable and efficient manner. She provides an important communication tool for the club that greatly adds to its sense of cohesion and this has been particularly evident recently during the Covid-19 lockdown. She has been less involved with event organisation recently due to illness but in the autumn helped coordinate the junior inter-area competition on Deeside. Her willingness to continue involvement through the newsletter whilst not being able to orienteer fully is much appreciated.