Announcement of President’s Medal Recipients

2020 was the most difficult year yet to decide on the winners of the President’s Medal to be awarded by Richard Oxlade (Acting President) following some fantastic nominations from across the country. This year the President’s Medal has been awarded to Janet Clark (ESOC) for her commitment and contribution to the sport.

Janet Clark

Janet has organised events for ESOC for the last 30 years.  Without her ESOC would not have established their successful series of events to encourage people to come and try orienteering and the club would not be able to provide the range of opportunities to introduce people to orienteering and subsequently develop within the sport. She is very hands on – getting involved with access, cajoling volunteers, looking after equipment, running the event, and promoting it (often done the hard way by delivering fliers to hundreds of houses in the locality). She is the first to volunteer to help with any orienteering activity. 

She epitomises the inclusive aspects of the sport encouraging everyone that orienteering is the sport for them – no-one is too young, too old, too unfit, everyone is welcome. She manages to make everyone feel like a winner and want to try the sport again. She also works to strengthen communities, volunteering with other community groups to promote orienteering and look after our wonderful outdoor playground. As someone in their late 70’s, she is the ultimate poster girl of the benefits of sport to promote health and wellbeing and keeping people active.

In summary Janet is the exemplar of a grassroots volunteer and to quote from the nomination “Without Janet, my family and hundreds of others would never have tried orienteering and decided it was the sport for them”.