Season’s Greetings! We know there are a number of events planned over the festive season and we are delighted to see that changes to Government guidance still permit outdoor activity and for events (under 500people) to go ahead. However we also wanted to reaffirm some of key guidance messages in place to ensure any orienteering events and activities are taking appropriate precautions to ensure they mitigate risk of the spread especially of the new, high transmissable covid variant of Omicron.
Our guidance issued 16th July still remains in place and the event risk assessments were updated in August should be used to help plan and organise events taking into considerations covid guidance. We felt it important to clarify a few areas of guidance at this time:
Minimise the number of people involved with on the day delivery of the event/activity
Indoor venues would ideally not be used for any part of the event/activity. However, we also recognise it is December in Scotland so if an indoor venue is in use it is vital that Scottish Government guidance is followed and 1m physical distancing is enforced. Further Scottish Government guidance is available at Coronavirus in Scotland – gov.scot No more than 100 people are permitted to be standing in an indoor venue so please take this into consideration.
Please ensure there is adequate hand sanitizer available at key touch points
Avoid display or provision of results at the event
Pre-registration is still a requirement of events in Scotland
We recommend no prize giving takes place to prevent crowds from gathering, even in an outdoors space.
As part of the SOA’s initiative to help kick start orienteering in the spring of 2021, some development funding was set aside specifically to support projects that would help restart club coaching. Maroc successfully applied for funding to help create a more sustainable club coaching programme, through developing resources to simplify and reduce the work involved in setting up a full club training session. The coaching resources have now been made available for other clubs to use and adapt to help develop their own club coaching programme.
The Scottish Junior Orienteering Squad held their final training camp of 2021 in Moray on the weekend of 10th – 12th December. It was great to get together for some fantastic training and festive fun.
In early 2021 the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) completed their 5 yearly anti-doping code review and issued the latest version. UKAD took this and updated and issued the rules that apply to the UK. The changes were not dramatic, but UKAD’s decision to require all sports to comply with their detailed assurance system and to do it in stages through the following 12 months is dramatic: it is also challenging. Anti-doping assurance is about to take on a much higher profile within all UK sports including orienteering. The IOF has also stated that it supports & adopts the WADA code.
Thank you to ESOC for running their second Championship event in 2021. The long awaited the Score event at Dalkieth took place on Sunday 21st November. Well done to everyone who participated and congratulations to all the Scottish Score Champions! Full results are available below.
What better way to start the New Year than with a new professional challenge?
We have 2 exciting positions to fill and are looking for motivated individuals with a passion for development and events to join our team. More details in the role outlines below.
Are you passionate about developing people? Interesting in coaching orienteering? Are you looking for a new challenge in 2022? Do you have the skills we are looking for in our new Coaching & Volunteering Officer to join our team? Read on to learn about this exciting opportunity.
Enthusiasm for returning to orienteering after the pandemic is evident in the nearly completed 2022 calendar. It looks like we’ll have a full SOL series, an abundance of SOUL competitions and hopefully a full set of Scottish Championships along with some popular events in the calendar. We remain committed to offering Juniors exciting opportunities with dates to finalise for Jamie Stephenson, Scottish Junior Cup and Inter-areas which we hope to announce very soon.
A big thank you to the everyone who has helped pull this together and to the clubs who have offered to organise these events. It’s going to be an exciting year when combined with all the other planned events and activities. A full calendar will be released in the coming weeks but we were keen to give you a flavour of what is in the offering.
