Scottish Schools Orienteering Festival 2011

Scottish Schools' Orienteering Festival
2011 - Wednesday 22nd June

Scone Palace, Perth

Revised: 19th Jun 2011

The Schools' Orienteering Festival took place on Wednesday 22 June at Scone Palace, Perth with start times throughout the morning.

Results are available here.

FINAL DETAILS

Thank you for entering pupils in this year’s National Festival. Almost 500 pupils will take part from 35 Schools. Due to the number of requests for late starts these are now extended to 12.30 pm

TRAVEL

Scone Palace is a major tourist attraction and is well signposted from all major approaches. You should enter the Palace Grounds by the main entrance North of Perth on the A93 Perth-Braemar Road . On entering proceed to the car park and park as directed by the Palace Staff. Please display the Car Parking sign emailed to you, as this will avoid confusion with paying customers!

SCONE PALACE

There are likely to be a lot of non-orienteering visitors to the Palace. Please ask your pupils to respect the paying public. We will have signs around the grounds explaining what is happening and asking other visitors for their patience. Please ensure no litter is left behind by competitors. The Palace has a coffee shop selling: tea, coffee, cakes, snacks and ice cream.

SAFETY

Orienteering, as an outdoor, adventurous activity, always carries some element of danger. This is controlled by the way that the area is used and the courses planned. Please ask all of your pupils to take care and not to climb on the various horse jumps that are dotted around the grounds or the walls and fences. Since the original event was cancelled, the Estate staff have been very busy with the clear-up of the damage caused by the gales in late May.

I have planned the courses to use the available area following long discussions with Scone but last minute changes may still be required – I will only find out on Tuesday evening if all of the planned work has been done! You will be informed of any last minute alterations on your arrival at the Festival. In the interests of fairness please do not allow runners to wander into the competition area. There is plenty of space around the start/finish for warm-ups.

SCOTTISH GAME FAIR

The preparations for this event are well underway and there are a number of marquees and temporary shelters in the parkland area. The following applies:

If these were present last Thursday and/or appear semi-permanent they have been mapped.
Temporary single rope boundaries have not been mapped and can be crossed.
There are lots of stakes and pegs in the ground. These are obviously not mapped and pupils should not touch these.

Again the courses have been planned to avoid crossing the majority of the areas affected by these temporary features. The exceptions are the S4, 5 and 6 courses that have options that could include passing through these areas.

MAP

Today’s map scale is 1:5,000 ie 1 cm on the map = 50 m on the ground. This is a change from the previous information! The map is an updated version of the one produced for the Park World Tour race in September and some symbols are different from standard orienteering maps. The most obvious difference that your pupils will notice is in the way that the paths and tracks are mapped. A PDF file will be emailed to show this.

Maps will be taken from pupils as they finish, to ensure fairness for all competitors. These can be collected by one teacher from each school at 12.40 pm . Please remind pupils that if they have moved onto a new timetable at school for next session that they MUST run in their old year grouping. This has caused confusion and pupil disqualifications in the past.

ELECTRONIC TIMING

We will once again be using Sportident electronic timing at the event. The timing pegs will be allocated to pupils at the registration point which will be located adjacent to the start area. Pupils should line up in an orderly fashion, ready to give their name to the officials. Please remind your pupils that the loss of a peg will result in a replacement charge being levied. All pupils must go to download after finishing their course.

COURSES

Courses are on the short side due to the restrictions placed on the planner. They range from 1.3 km for the P5/6 Girls to 3.8 km for the Senior Boys.

AWARDS

Awards will be made to the first 3 individuals/pairs on each course. Up to 3 team awards will be made for each course – fastest 3 times to count towards the award. The prize giving will take place as soon after 1.15 as possible.

HELPERS ON THE COURSE

There will be helpers on the course to provide reassurance to less confident runners. They will be stationed near the start and at the road crossing. These helpers will be wearing white SPORTS LEADER t-shirts or a day glow jacket.

TROPHY RETURN AND PAYMENTS

Anyone who has a trophy to return from last year’s Festival should return this to registration before their run. Schools who made changes to entries and require to pay more, please report to registration.

THANKS TO:

Lord and Lady Stormont
Staff at Scone Palace – particularly Heather and Hugh
Tay Orienteers
Robin and Kirsten Strain
Biggar High School
Lorna, Lynn, Emma, Marcella McLennan, Dave Prentice, John and Doreen Biggar, John Telfer and anyone else I have inadvertently missed.

WORLDS SCHOOLS

Eighteen pupils from: Aboyne, Banchory, Biggar, Boroughmuir and Charleston have recently returned from representing Scotland at the World Schools’ Orienteering Championships in Northern Italy . They had a very successful week competing against 500 other runners from 23 Delegations and returned with:

1 World Champion – Jennifer Ricketts, Middle Distance, Banchory

1 Team Bronze – Banchory Academy

2 Podium Finishes – Jennifer Ricketts – Long Distance 4^th, Bronwyn Matthews – Middle Distance 6^th

Most of the team will be running at SSOF 2011. Well done to all of the Scottish Orienteers and their coaches.

Scottish Schools Orienteering Association