Junior Inter Regional Trophies find their way back to Scotland
Last weekend saw a Scottish Junior team make their way to the South West for the Junior Inter Regional Championships. This event takes place every year and sees juniors from all 12 regions of the UK come together to compete for their region but most importantly to socialise with fellow orienteers from their regions and beyond. With over 200 juniors attending and everyone staying in the same location orienteering is on the agenda but catching up on their social life is just as high!
Saturday saw the individual event take place at Mallards Pike in the Forest of Dean. The terrain was runnable with a network of ditches and old mine workings to test their navigation. As is standard the juniors set up camp, got down to face painting to ensure everyone was in the team spirit and provided vocal support to all coming through the spectator control.
Not even the coaches escaped showing their team colours.
With the top two runners counting for each region – the team knew what they had to do. There were some brilliant individual performances from the more experienced James Hammond (FVO) and Lawrence Ward (INT) taking the 1st and 2nd in the M18 class to Henrik Borrowman (INVOC), Peter Owen (FVO), Lucy Ward (INT), Emily Atkinson (ELO) and Kate McLuckie (MOR) all coming 2nd in their respective classes. It was great to see some juniors who have never attended an event like this soaking up the atmosphere and making friends.
Scotland dominated the individual day to take the Individual Trophy by over 50 points ahead of a Yorkshire and Humberside and South West in second and third respectively who were separated by only four points !
Once tea and prize giving was out the way the dancing began with Scottish juniors providing the musical accompaniment and guidance all the way through to Old Lang’s Syne at the end.
Sunday morning and the relay event saw no rest for the juniors as they were all packed and breakfasted by 8am to be ready for the relay run through and first start shortly. The 16’s were out first (with their war paint fully applied) followed by the 14s and then the 18s.
The Mendip hills provided Sunday’s challenge and tested the legs of the juniors with the planner choosing to provide a 300m uphill run in for the finishers which had the spectators needing to use all their best encouragement to juniors valiantly running in to either hand over or take the finish.
Relays are always full of excitement or fingernail biting for the coaches and this year proved without exception. The female teams pulled out all stops to come in to claim 1st and 5th spots with the top two male teams taking 3rd and 4th spots. Everyone performed amazingly and special mention for Ellie Darlow (RR) who went out and had a storming run coming in 4th in the 18 age group despite knowing her team had mispunched.
The Scottish juniors took 2nd place in both the male and female categories, behind South West and Yorkshire and Humberside respectively, which meant that they took the overall relays trophy and therefore claimed the overall win in the Junior Inter Regional Championships.
Well done to all the juniors taking part and to South West for organising such a great experience for the juniors. As Jon Musgrave’s last JIRCS before he retires as ScotJOS coach he was especially pleased to see the junior’s amazing team spirit and support for each other. He of course has one last challenge before retiring with the Junior Home Internationals taking place on 12th/13th October down in East Anglia.
