This year nine orienteers received Golden Service Awards, announced at the 2025 Annual General Meeting. The purpose of the Orienteering USA Golden Service Award is to recognize those individuals who have provided exceptional service to the sport of orienteering that extends beyond the local club level. Read on for bit about each of this year’s awardees!
(more…)Congratulations to Peter Goodwin of Up North Orienteers (UNO), the recipient of the 2025 Silva Award, Orienteering USA’s highest honor for service to the sport.
Orienteering Cincinnati nominates Peter Goodwin for the Silva Award. Peter is the former President of Orienteering USA with a long history of advocacy for US Orienteering. He organized a series of mapping and lidar clinics at NREs in the years prior to Covid. He is a long-time OUSA course consultant, where he has advised OCIN and many other OUSA clubs on their national ranking events. His work has been instrumental in making OUSA NRE courses more interesting and age-level appropriate, contributing to the success of our national-level events. It is recorded in OUSA board meeting minutes that Peter verbally guaranteed the OUSA Loan to BAOC for their 10-day NAOC and California O-Fest event held near Truckee and Lake Tahoe. Peter’s support helped ensure the success of this event that later experienced significant disruption to their financial planning as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting delays.
The Silva Award is given annually to an orienteer who, along with being a member of Orienteering USA, has demonstrated outstanding service to orienteering in the United States over the past five years. The recipient need not be a terrific orienteer, and orienteering skill is not considered in determining the award winner. The essential quality of every winner has been service to promoting and sustaining orienteering, to making the sport work in this country, and in helping to build the organizations needed to make orienteering successful.
The September forum will take place on Thursday, September 25th at 8:30pm ET on Google Meet.
This July, three Youth Development Program athletes attended Silva O’ Camp, an IOF-endorsed orienteering camp with over 200 athletes held in the Czech Republic. The athletes trained seriously and got up to some serious fun! Join us for this forum to learn more about the camp and hear directly from athletes and coaches.
You can read a bit about the US experience here.
Join on Google Meet on Thursday, September 25th at 8:30pm ET.
The Youth Mapping Program September Map of the Month is Auburndale Park in Newton, MA. This map was created in 2020 for use in youth and adult orienteering classes.
“I learned so much from this process that it helped me better understand orienteering…The more people orienteering, the better!” said Recreation Manager Channon Ames.
Interested in having a map made of your school? Learn more about the program and apply here.
This July, three YDP athletes attended Silva O’ Camp, an IOF-endorsed orienteering camp with over 200 athletes held in the Czech Republic. The athletes got up to some serious training and serious fun. Read about it below:
It’s summer camp in full swing — campfires, card games, dips in the river, friendships made in one week that last a lifetime. On the menu for daily activities? Orienteering, orienteering, and more orienteering.
The USA was represented by three athletes (Finlay Rebbeck, Zoe Liu Coates, and Ally Liu Coates) from Cascade and three coaches at Silva O’Camp 2025, an international summer camp for young orienteers held in Vidnava, Czech Republic. While Silva camp has been around for decades, it has been an IOF endorsed camp since 2023. This year’s small American team was an exploratory group supported by the YDP to gauge the suitability of the camp for our youth.
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Host: Navigation Games
Venue: Boston, MA
Boston-area orienteers were treated to a special urban middle in the city of Boston, 250 years after Paul Revere’s famous ride.
Photos by Stefan Slutsky.
Hosts: Mount Hood Orienteering and Columbia River Orienteering Club
Venues: Skyline Sno-Park and Billy Bob Sno-Park, in the shadows of Mt Hood, Oregon
Two clubs, two days of challenging orienteering in the shadow of Mount Hood, Oregon!
With over 2,000 entries this year, the World Masters Orienteering Championships (WMOC) in Girona, Spain, was clearly the place to be. The WMOC is the IOF championship event for those aged 35 and older, and every year Masters athletes from around the world travel to compete, some of them against friends they’ve known for many decades.
All photos from Evalin Brautigam. Map snippets from Livelox.
There were 34 US athletes in attendance this year, from clubs all over the country. The highlights for the US contingent include three podium trips for Sharon Crawford (W80), who earned a bronze in the sprint, and silver in both the middle and long. Over in M80, Peter Gagarin earned bronze medals in the sprint and long.
There does not appear to be an official repository for routes and maps, but this search on Livelox should get you some wildcat entries with plenty to look at.
Lots more results, splits, and photos on the official WMOC site.
The August forum will take place on Wednesday, August 27th at 8:30pm ET on Google Meet.
Join Elias “Eli” Jimenez, founder of VentR-out, for a live demo of a virtual reality orienteering simulation grounded in the fundamentals of the sport. Drawing on past experiences competing in and organizing adventure races, he sees VR’s potential for simulating outdoor experiences in a new way. This early-stage project highlights VR as a promising medium for orienteering training. Get a first-hand look at what’s possible, where it could go next, and how you could help shape its evolution.
Join on Google Meet on Wednesday, August 27th at 8:30pm ET.
The IOF Ski-O schedule for the winter of 2026 is out now!
The Ski-O World Championships will take place in Japan March 1-7, 2026; the Junior World Championships, Youth Championships, and a round of World Cup races will take place in Sweden February 5-8, 2026, and World Masters and a round of World Cup races will take place in Bulgaria January 21-25, 2026.
Anyone can race in World Masters Ski-Orienteering Championships. Applications to race for the US in any of the other ski-o races should be sent to US Ski-O ESC Chair Adrian Owens (aowens@nullsterlingcollege.edu) by September 30, 2025.
Applications for juniors and seniors must include: race results (ski-O, foot-O, X-C skiing), Training done for the past year (preferably in a standard like Strava or Attackpoint), training plans for the coming year, a brief statement of interest about joining the team, and biographical info (birth date, citizenship status, gender, Orienteering USA membership number as membership is a requirement to be on the US Ski-O Team). Questions about the races or the US Ski-O Team more broadly can be addressed to Adrian or US Ski-O Team Coach Carl Fey (carlffey@nullgmail.com).
Applications should be sent to ESC chair Adrian Owens by email before Sept 30, 2025.
