Growing the Sport of Orienteering in Ireland

The IOA has recruited Humphrey Murphy of ILC to undertake a consultation process to review the current status of orienteering in Ireland. The objective is to identify the challenges and opportunities for growing the sport in Ireland and increasing participation. The next step is to invite clubs and club members to get involved in the process.

We will be hosting a zoom session on Growing the Sport of Orienteering in Ireland for Wednesday 7^th October 2020 at 7pm so that you can contribute to the development of your sport and help us to increase the numbers orienteering.

The session will be facilitated by Humphrey and will be interactive. You will need to pre-register by Monday 5^th October but please register as soon as possible.

We are very keen to hear the voices of the clubs and regular members on how best to grow the sport we love.

Link to Register in advance for this meeting:
https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJUldO2pqD8jEtyarOK8-H_RlWQ28GzZiaAL

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Note: For this meeting  you must use  the Zoom desktop client or mobile app. You will not be able to join using the web client.

If you have any questions please email info@orienteering.ie

Regards

Mary O’Connell

Chairperson

Irish Orienteering Association

Winners of 2019 IOA Annual Awards

At the 2020 IOA AGM (on Zoom) the three IOA awards for 2019 were presented.

Mac Tire Award was given to Tony Cotter of BOC.

This year the Spirit of Orienteering Award was presented to Mike Long of AJAX

One Performance Excellence medal was presented to Nicholas Simonin for his performance in the WOC Middle Distance event in 2019. 

For more information on these awards IOA Annual Awards

EJOC Update

After much discussion and consideration of local, international and sporting guidelines in the current climate of COVID-19, it is with regret that we have come to the decision not to send a team to EJOC in October. Overall we feel the negatives outweigh the benefits of competition and experience in this case. In order to enter Hungary all athletes and delegates would need to have two negative COVID-19 tests, would have the time away from school / work during the competition, and then would be required to quarantine for two weeks on their return. The situation is evolving as we know and there is also the possibility of families having the financial consequences of cancelled travel. The process of selecting a team has been compromised with the loss of selection races and few competition results to consider. It is incredibly unfortunate for all of the athletes involved to miss out on EJOC this year.

Our focus now will be on getting back to training locally as soon as possible, planning for our future training weekends here in Ireland, and getting organised to bring training groups to future training camps to prepare for EYOC and JWOC 2021 as soon as it is safe to do so. We have a number upcoming livestreamed training sessions planned for the autumn as well.

Looking forward to getting all our juniors back in action as soon as possible and ready for a great season in 2021.