JHI 2018 Team Announcement

This year the Ward Junior Home International will be held in Scotland on the weekend 06/07 October. We have been kindly invited again by NIOA to run a team, and are delighted to do so.

I am delighted to announce the JHI 2018 Squad . The selectors have spent a considerable amount of time looking at results and discussing the performances of all individuals. The competition for the twenty-four spaces on the squad has been very strong and shows the increasing strength of the entire Irish Junior Squad. There have been several close and tough decisions made.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the selectors for their very hard work.

Best Wishes to the team selected, and to those not selected, please continue to enjoy our sport.  Orienteering, although niche, is a great way to keep fit, keep the brain active, and spend time in the outdoors. Keep your eyes peeled for next years Selection Criteria.

Junior Tour 2018

Many thanks to Cliodhna Donaghy for her account of the Junior Trip.  I would especially like to thank, on behalf of the Junior Squad, Toni O’Donovan and her family.  Without whom this trip would not have happened, and who’s dedication to the cause went above and beyond the call of duty.

Junior Training trip to France

Saturday 21st July was the beginning of the 2018 O Tour, as around 30 juniors and their families (from all over Ireland) made their way to Les Plans d’Hotonnes, a tiny village located high up in the Jura mountains. We settled into our gites, and then the 60 or so of us met up for dinner at the largest gite. A few card games later we headed off to bed for the nine o’clock start in the morning.

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Important Information re: Irish Orienteering

Dear Orienteers,

I am contacting you as Vice-Chairman of IOA to ask for your help.

Would you, or any of your club members, be prepared to give a little extra
to orienteering to support the National Governing Body?

At the IOA AGM in early May there were three positions on the IOA Executive
Committee which remained unfilled. The position of Chairman fell vacant
because of a constitutional requirement governing the length of time the
same person can stay in office, and the positions of Technical Officer and
Public Relations Officer became vacant as the officers were withdrawing for
personal reasons.

You may ask what the IOA does for clubs: simply put, without the National
Governing Body there would be no orienteering in Ireland. The IOA arranges
fixtures, publicity, rules, insurance, national team selection, good
governance, mapping standards, child protection, government grants, sport
development, coaching schemes, high performance, data protection, the IOA
website, affiliation to the International Orienteering Federation and any
number of other functions which allow Irish orienteering to continue.

The members of the Executive Committee are all volunteers who are active in
orienteering and who give some of their own time for the good of the sport.
All of us do this in addition to being active in our own clubs as planners,
organisers etc, and to taking part as competitors ourselves.

The three vacant positions are important ones in their own right, and the
other Officers of the IOA are too involved in their own areas to take on
these additional responsibilities.

If we can’t get people to fill these three vacancies the sport will suffer
and it will give a poor impression of our level of commitment to those
looking at the sport, whether they be Sport Ireland, media, or others.

Because the members are dispersed around the country, most IOA meetings are
done by conference phone calls with occasional face to face meetings,
totalling no more than about 8 per year.

In my own case, I am happy to remain as Vice-Chair but a Chairperson is
required.

We have had a series of excellent Chairs over the years and I have no doubt
that there are more people out there involved in orienteering who could
step into the role: people who are imaginative, persuasive, far-sighted,
active in orienteering, motivated and prepared to give something back to
the sport. If this is you, please get in touch with me, or with any of the
Executive Committee, or with our Administrator, Áine Joyce, to discuss it.

Please circulate this to your club committee and members as it is a serious
situation which needs to be addressed sooner rather than later.

John McCullough
Vice Chairman, IOA