A total of 34 people attended some or all of the OA Annual Conference at the Australian Institute of Sport on the weekend of 1 & 2 December. Mats Troeng from the Swedish Orienteering Federation was a special guest; he has been working closely with OA Board member Craig Feuerherdt in implementing the Swedish Eventor management system for events, memberships, calendar and results. The Eventor events system is already up and running for online entry for the Christmas 5 Days and Easter 2013 carnivals, and the programming to set up online memberships should be complete in a week or two.
Some of the major decisions of the Conference were the following.
High Performance
Following excellent presentations by Gareth Candy and Hanny Allston on gaps in the development pathway for orienteers in Australia, from beginning at club level through to WOC medal contention, and strategies to address these gaps, it was agreed to set up a High Performance Working Group to produce a new Development Pathway Plan to 2020 with vision statement, strategies and performance indicators. This will be done over the next 2 to 3 months. This follows on from last Friday’s Government announcement of a new strategic plan for high performance sport in Australia; the existence of a strong Development Pathway Plan will be crucial for us to be considered for continued high performance funding.
Eventor
The Conference formally agreed to adopt Eventor as the national management system for events, memberships and calendar, and strongly encouraged all states to maximise their use of it. The Conference further agreed on an ongoing funding stream to cover the annual costs of Eventor based on a combination of state registration fees and a levy per event day on all events in the Easter and Australian Championship carnivals.
Sprint relays
The IOF is introducing a 4-person sprint relay (F-M-M-F) into WOC from 2014 (http:// orienteering.org/sprint-relay-in-the-world-orienteering-championships-2014/). Conference agreed to encourage state associations to trial sprint relays from 2013, but perhaps experiment with formats such as 2 person teams running a F-M format over 4 legs to create more intense head to head competition. ONSW will use the recommended IOF format for a NOL event on the weekend after Easter 2014.
Australian Schools Sprint Championship
The Conference supported a recommendation by Australian Orienteering Schools Coordinator Ian alton that a trial Australian Schools Sprint Championship be investigated for the 2014 Australian Championships Carnival. The organisers, OAWA, will now consider this option in their planning.
International developments
Orienteering Tasmania is formally bidding to the IOF to conduct World Cup events as part of the Oceania Championships in Tasmania in the first week of January in 2015. NZOF is formally bidding to the IOF to conduct the World Masters Orienteering Championships in New Zealand in 2017 as part of the World Masters Games in New Zealand in that year.