ScotJOS Training Restarted

ScotJOS, the Scottish Junior Orienteering Squad, enjoyed their 1st post Lockdown training session on Sunday at Kinnoull Hill.

ScotJOS had a great day back out in the forest on Sunday 16th August. To meet the new regulations, the juniors and coaching team met as 5 small training groups (or bubbles) rather than as a complete squad.

Jon Musgrave, ScotJOS Coach, planned 5 fantastic and challenging exercises each with a different start point and the groups rotated round the 5 stations in order. There were corridor and line exercises, a control pick and an exercise on longer legs. Kinnoull Hill has a myriad network of small paths and just to provide an additional challenge all of these were removed from the training maps.

For anyone whose orienteering brain had been lacking use over the past few months, the exercises certainly got them working again! With all the worry about meeting regulations, the only incident of the day was completely unrelated to Covid and involved an encounter with a wasps nest.

The new format was very well received by juniors and coaches and was great fun as well as intensive training. The feeling of a return to new form of normality was evident and seeing smiling faces in the forest again was fantastic. Huge thanks to all the coaches and parents who made this session happen.

Following the success of this session, plans are now afoot for the final training session of this squad year in September and ScotJOS will then start to look forward to planning for 2020/21.