Category: Events

Orienteering USA and Orienteering Canada, with approval from the IOF, have made the decision to postpone the next two North American Orienteering Championships (NAOC).  Organizers of both events are in full agreement. 

The NAOCs in California will now be held in 2023 instead of this summer.  The NAOCs scheduled for 2022 in Ottawa, Canada will move to 2024 or 2025.

California OFest, including NAOCs, in 2023 will be hosted with little change from what was planned – first for 2020 then for 2021, now for 2023.   This summer Bay Area Orienteering Club (BAOC) will host an alternative event in the Lake Tahoe area for those who can travel and attend.

In Canada, due to COVID-19 restrictions,  it has not been possible to get mapping done in time for a major 2022 event, so organizers have requested a move to after the CalOFest NAOCs.  The final date of 2024 or 2025 is yet to be determined, but will be decided jointly by Orienteering Canada and Orienteering USA, in conjunction with the IOF.

A special thank you to organizers of all orienteering events who have had to make changes and adaptations because of COVID-19.  It is you who keep our sport going!

We all look forward to when we can gather and orienteer again without any restrictions! 

The World Games 2022 are coming to the USA! July 7 – 17, 2022 will see athletes from around the world unite in Birmingham, Alabama to compete in over 30 sports. There will be three Orienteering events:

• Middle Distance at Oak Mountain
• Sprint at Birmingham Southern College
• Sprint Relay in downtown at Rail Road Park

Vulcan Orienteering Club (VOC), is in charge of managing the volunteers, of which many will be needed. We will need people to man the Quarantine, Start, Finish areas, Control Testers and Watchers, Traffic Control and help with the Spectator Events. This is a chance to show the world’s best orienteers that OUSA can put on a first class event. It will be exciting and fun.

Do you want to be on the world stage as the “Start Official”?

We will have more details as the Volunteer Program rolls out, but if you are interested in participating you can contact Anne Mathews at bamaanne@nullbellsouth.net. 

The World School Championship Orienteering for 2021, originally scheduled for June in Belgrade, Serbia has been moved to September 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The WSCO is organized by the International School Sport Federation (ISF) and is independent of the International Orienteering Federation (IOF).

A Memorandum of Understanding promoting cooperation between the IFS and IOF was signed in 2016, without a requirement for participating school teams to be members of IOF. In addition, the teams need to be teams representing schools from a nation rather than national teams composed of students of various ages. Any school can participate, without any requirement of an affiliation with the IOF and thus with the national federation (OUSA).

ISF World Schools Championships (WSC) are events characterized by a balanced program between sport and educational content: the balance between sport and education is to create awareness about the role of sport in putting forward topics such as fair play, healthy lifestyle, respect, inclusion. The event is a little more comparable to a Jamboree, with mandatory participation of all athletes in all the planned activities, including non-sport ones.

Photos: ISF WSC Orienteering Facebook page

The dates for WSOC 2021 have been moved from July to September, with the updated bulletin published here. The registration fee for a school is dependent on whether it is affiliated with the country’s IFS member organization, which for the USA is the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), however, orienteering is not a sport currently listed with the AAU. Schools interested in participating with a team at the WSCO may want to contact the AAU directly to see what options would be available to take advantage of AAU’s membership in the IFS.

Schools are not required to be affiliated with Orienteering USA or OUSA member clubs in order to participate in the WSCO events, but many OUSA clubs have liaisons with local schools to facilitate promotion of the sport at the school level.

California Orienteering Festival 2021 has been moved to 2023.

In its place a new Tahoe 2021 event that encompasses the same range of dates is planned. This new event will include the 2021 US Orienteering Champs and NA Rogaining Championships {pending sanctioning}.Difficult decision to be sure, but this allows the CalOFest to still be held, albeit a few years down the line, and yet still allows a quality series of summer events this year for those able to travel to California.

The World Trail Orienteering Championships, originally scheduled for July in Poland, have been postponed to July 19-23, 2022 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Read more at International Orienteering Federation.

A couple of videos from the Georgia Orienteering Festival (GAOC) held last weekend have been uploaded to the OUSA Facebook and YouTube channels. The first video is a minimally edited assemblage of clips featuring OUSA Junior Team members in action.

The second video highlights the Southeastern Interscholastic Orienteering Championships held in conjunction with the O-Fest.

In addition, Orienteering USA has uploaded much of the raw, unedited video footage to a Google Drive for downloading by schools, clubs and individuals to utilize in creating derivative media for publicity. The majority of clips are sorted/titled by date, school, bib# and name to facilitate identifying useful content. Any media used should credit/tag Orienteering USA. The content in these folders will be deleted at the end of April, so grab any clips you want now.

New dates have been confirmed for a couple of 2020 events that were postponed due to the pandemic.

The New England Championships, a classic two-day event to be held at Willard Brook SF in Massachusetts will be held October 2-3, 2021.

Run the Rotary, a one-day NRE to be held near Albany, NY will be held on May 14, 2022.

Click the event bar in the full schedule for more details.

Reminder: Regular registration for next months Georgia O-Fest ends tomorrow evening.

Earlier this morning the Orienteering USA Sanctioning committee unanimously voted to sanction 3 days of NRE competition – the first multi-day national event since the start of the pandemic over a year ago.

The event will take place April 9-11 – that’s only 3 weeks away folks! The usual advance notice, permits, sanctioning etc were held up due to COVID-19 restrictions but the event organizers have been given the green light.

COVID-19 safety protocols will be followed and registration information should be forthcoming shortly.

Friday: Middle Distance at McIntosh Reserve
Sat/Sun: Two-Day Classic at Don Carter State Park.

Photos courtesy Laurie Searle