NI Junior Team back from JIRCs
Steph Pruzina, NIOA Junior Team Manager reports on the Junior Inter-Regional Championships…
This year, a small NIOA squad set off for the Junior Inter-Regional Championships hosted in the Bristol area by NGOC and BOK. Between them Euan Kennedy and Emma Graham hatched a plan to kit us all out with team hoodies, branded NIOA and with Just-In-Time delivery the team looked stunning. We had many adventures over the weekend, including the EasyJet Bag-check competition; eating so much at the Stag and Hounds pub that the chef accidentally cooked us an extra meal; and losing the hold luggage inside the scanner at Bristol Airport on the way back.
But we were there to orienteer, and the team did us proud. Day 1 was a 75 minute drive over to Mallard’s Pike West on a map that overlapped the area the VHI’s ran on last year. We had discussed probable techniques and route choices during which I admitted my mistakes from last year and in nice mainly runnable forest the team all performed. The juniors have worked really hard and enthusiastically in the 6 weeks coming up to the competition and came to extra coaching sessions most weeks. Our target for the JIRCs was to have clean runs, safe route choices and no mis-punches and we definitely achieved that. It was great to see happy people after their races feeling pleased with their runs.
The overall results for the competition are calculated such that only the first 2 runners from each region score points with 24 points awarded for first place down to 1 point, meaning there are points available for the first two runners home from every region, but having age categories with no juniors means we start with a significant disadvantage. Special mention should go to Adam our highest scoring runner with 12 points in the M14 individual race and also to James Ewart who is well on the road to full fitness after injury earlier in the year. James was a non-competitive team member who still managed to place 4th in the individual race.
The relay arena on Sunday was just beside the door of the breakfast marquee at Mendip Outdoor Activity Centre, but even so we had to be up early to clear our rooms. Again, we were disadvantaged from the start by having only one competitive team. However, everyone got a run and we had some super performances particularly from Sam and Emma Graham, both in Ad hoc teams. There was plenty of cheering as our runners toiled across the uphill spectator control and finished up the steep 300m run in.
Finally, Thanks again to Michael Kennedy and Dave Wilson who helped with everything and ferried the juniors about, to Dave for his Sabotage™ skills and of course to all the juniors for being such a great gang. I think the photo above gives a flavour of the camaraderie in the team. We are all sorry to be saying goodbye to Emma Graham, Anastasia Maglichand Peter Gamble from the JIRCs team, but hope they will all still be part of the squad and involved with the coaching!
