Plenty of events scheduled for National Orienteering Week

With National Yukon Orienteering week beginning on Saturday, the Yukon Orienteering Association (YOA) has a number of events scheduled to help promote the sport over the course of the next seven days.

The YOA will hold three events in total, which will begin with Saturday’s Learn to O clinic. The clinic is filled to capacity and will feature around 12 participants, who will be taught by three instructors. The YOA will use the long-lake southeast map and will use the area behind the hospital for the event.

Participants at the event will breakup into smaller groups and take part in several exercises, which will teach them techniques and strategies that will make their orienteering a positive experience. Among the skills that will be taught will be how to properly read the map and keep their map oriented. Additionally, they will also learn basic compass skills.

The Learn to O clinic is not a competition and is purely an instructional course to teach learning skills in the sport. It will run for about six hours on Saturday.

“It is a popular event and it’s been well subscribed,” said Barbara Scheck, president of the YOA. “There have been years where we had 30 people taking it and we obviously had a lot more instructors to help, but this year it seems everyone is away or has other commitments.”

Besides the Learn to O clinic, the YOA will host its regular Wednesday night series meet, which is open to anyone who is interested in participating. The Wednesday night series costs $5 for members of the YOA, while non-members pay $10, which includes a $5 day membership fee.

Thursday will mark a historic occasion for the YOA as it will be the first time the organization hosts the Seniors and Others event. The meet will begin at noon at Rotary Peace Park and it will use a map featuring the downtown area of the city.

Seniors and Others is open to anyone and the same fees as the Wednesday night series will apply, with the exception of seniors, who will be subsidized for the meet.

Scheck said Seniors Others will provide a good opportunity for many people to tryout the sport.

“We want to have different events that may appeal to different people and at different times too,” she said. “One thing I have
found to is that people without a car do find it hard to get to our orienteering meets because they are outside of the bus routes.”

She said the YOA usually does one downtown event every year.

“We have a really great map of the downtown area of Whitehorse,” Scheck said. “So this event would also be very suitable for anyone who has mobility issues because it will be on pavement. If they are in a wheelchair or if they have some difficulty walking, this would be a good event for them.”

Scheck said urban maps are usually easier for people to understand.

“People can understand the urban maps faster than they can the forested maps because then you get topography,” she said.

“So it’s usually easy to pickup fairly quickly and fun because it is very detailed. We show things like fire hydrants, so people usually like that. It’s a really great map.”

There is no limit to the amount of people who can take part in Thursday’s Seniors and Others event.