Category: US Team

Following a meeting on April 23, 2021, the IOF made the following announcement regarding the 2021 JWOC:

“The organisers and regional authorities in Turkey have requested that the Junior World Orienteering Championships (JWOC) 2021 be postponed from July to new dates in September 2021. The July dates are no longer possible due to planning difficulties caused by the pandemic. The new dates will be confirmed next week.”

Following confirmation of the new dates for JWOC, JTESC will publish a new deadline for the petitions and team announcement, as well as added information regarding any IOF or JWOC Covid-19 pertinent information. The current IOF Bulletin Covid-19 may be found here: https://orienteering.sport/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/iof-covid-19-bulletin-10-feb-2021.pdf.

The JWOC selection committee is excited to announce the athletes who have been chosen to compete in the 2020 Junior World Championships. We realize that the world situation with COVID 19 means that the champs may or may not happen and that the timing may be sub-optimal for athletes especially who live in the US because the postponed date falls right in the middle of the fall school semester. Even so we have decided to choose a team in case there is an opportunity for our athletes to represent the US at the world champs. We understand that selected athletes may not be able to attend and that the team size could potentially be reduced due to the current situation. In this case the team coach will have the final say in giving alternates in the designated order a chance to step up based on his evaluation of where they are at leading up to the championships.

This year was quite a hard decision for the selection committee because we had almost no recent high level racing data and most of the head to head racing data came from last summer or spring. The committee used the petition process rubric as a guideline to support their decision making. The committee prioritized current physical fitness levels by way of recent 3k time trials, training volume and consistency from training logs, previous race experience, and overall competitive experience. As always the last spots and alternate positions are very tough to decide, particularly given the circumstances of this year. We deeply regret that all the athletes didn’t get the chance they usually would to prove their ability at trials races. The selection committee is nevertheless pleased to announce the follow teams and alternates.

Men:
– Keegan Harkavy
– Thomas Laraia
– Aidan Minto
– Anthony Riley
– David Runde
– Adrian Vartia
Alternate: Kai Mihata 

Women:
– Diana Aleksieva
– Julia Doubson
– Bridget Hall
– Kirsten Mayland
– Alexis Merka
– Emilia Schmidt
Alternates: Annika Mihata, Christiane Fletcher, Jessica Colleran

Thank you to all the athletes who tried out and for all the hard work. We encourage everyone to keep working hard; you never know when the breakthroughs will come.

Best of luck. Sincerely

The JWOC Selection Committee of Jon Torrance, Greg Ahlswede, Erin Schirm

The USA Junior Team Executive Steering Committee (JTESC) is excited to welcome and introduce to you our new Junior National Coach, Oskar Andrén!  Oskar is a 25 year-old Swedish elite orienteer, with some impressive results, and continuing ambitions for his own orienteering career.  He is currently living in Trondheim, Norway, where he is studying Science of Human Movement at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).

Last year, representing the Swedish National Team, he ran his first World Cup races in China, achieving 36th place in the Sprint, and 45th in the Middle.  Other 2019 results included the Norwegian champs (Sprint 4th, Middle 5th, and Long 16th), and the Swedish champs (Sprint 4th, Sprint Relay 2nd, and Relay 5th).  Oskar also had success during his junior years:  He made the podium three times at the 2014 Junior European Cup (JEC): Sprint gold, Long silver, and Relay silver.

Oskar has almost 4 years of prior experience coaching younger orienteering athletes.  He worked one year at the orienteering high school in Hallsberg, Sweden, and, has worked 2.5 years (so far) at the Orienteering high school in Trondheim.  Beside coaching at the schools, he helped organize training camps for the Norwegian junior national team and was a team leader at the 2019 JEC in France. 

Oskar’s own words to National Junior Program (NJP) members… “My ambitions for this job [are] to combine my knowledge, experience and ideas together with the experience that previous coaches had, [and] to help inspire you into being as good as you can be.”

Please join JTESC in saying…
Välkommen Oskar!