Director of Junior Representative Orienteering
We are delighted to announce that Colleen Robinson has kindly taken on the voluntary role as Director of Junior Representative orienteering and her appointment has been unanimously sanctioned by the IOA committee.
Many of you will know Colleen from orienteering events where she and her family compete regularly for Setanta orienteers, Colleen has kindly given us a little of her background as she adds another role to her busy family life!
“I am a physical therapist with a special interest in physical conditioning and injury prevention. I studied Athletic Therapy in Canada working with dancers, track and field athletes and rugby players before moving to Ireland in 2003. A former top level competitive and then professional touring Irish dancer, I took up orienteering on a club level after arriving in Ireland and joined Setanta Orienteers. I am a past club secretary for Setanta. In the last number of years I have had the pleasure of competing on three VHI teams. As a parent of three very young orienteers, just discovering the love of orienteering, I feel privileged to take on the role of Director of Junior Representative Orienteering. I look forward to putting my organisational and communication skills to use in the further development of junior orienteering as a whole with the IOA, aiding the progression of our young juniors with the organisation of regular focused training activities, and particularly playing my part on the team to provide for the needs of our high performance juniors training to compete at international level – coordinating the goal oriented training opportunities, equipment and competition logistics to allow these talented young athletes to achieve their full potential and have fun while they do it!
I may not necessarily have the greatest technical knowledge of orienteering, however in a former life I was a Canadian, North American, All-Ireland and World medal holder in Irish dance. I am very acutely aware of the forces behind me that enabled to me achieve these wins. Then as a professional dancer on tour with some of the best dancers in the world I was also in charge of training and planning tours for a junior arts company so again I am fairly experienced in planning training workshops and tours for juniors.”
