The Yukon Orienteering Association has hired a coach from Portugal to help train their athletes.

Beatriz Sanguino, 23, has been here for a couple of months now.

“It was kind of lucky that I’m here because I’m studying in Norway as an Erasmus (student) here and I have a club there, NTNUI, and one of the girls was contacted by Erik (Blake). He couldn’t find a coach so she posted on the group chat ... and I found it kind of interesting. I wanted to go there and yeah, now I’m here and it’s amazing.”

Erasmus is a European Union program to support education, training, youth and sport in Europe. Sanguino is studying for a degree in mechanical engineering in Tronheym, Norway and is specializing in robotics.

“I like it. It’s really interesting.”

Sanguino explains how she ended up in Norway.

“My university in Portugal, they have plenty of different countries with agreements so we can do Erasmus in different countries and when I was choosing which country I wanted to do I had a lot of countries to choose but Norway seemed really interesting because it was a good university. In terms of orienteering it was amazing. I had a lot of opportunities to do orienteering, much better than Portugal. And the nature – they have plenty of nature, too, so it was amazing.

“It was between Norway and Canada, but Canada they only had one university and it was in Quebec and my French was not really good, so that’s why I chose Norway.

“I have always wanted to come to Canada so being here is like a dream come true, especially because I’m doing orienteering every day. It’s amazing.”

While in the Yukon, Sanguino is staying with Yukon Orienteering Association (YOA) Treasurer Erik Blake’s family.

“They took me in and they are super-welcoming. They’re making me feel like I’m at home.”

It was the YOA that hired Sanguino for the coaches’ position.

She has been in the Yukon since the beginning of May. She will be going back to Norway in July, as the programs finish in early July.

On July 1, Sanguino and other Yukon orienteers will travel to Calgary for the Canadian Orienteering Championships on July 8-10, part of the Canadian Rockies Orienteering Festival July 1-10.

“I will participate and then I will fly from Calgary back to Norway when it finishes. So I won’t be coming back to Whitehorse, unfortunately.”

“I’m super-excited. I never did such a long race. I think we only have one day of rest. Or maybe two.”

“I hope I do well but I’m not that much worried about competition; I just wanna enjoy the terrains because this is completely new, different terrains and I have never been here, so I just want to have fun. I just want to take the best of it.”

Sanguino is really enjoying her time in the Yukon.

“It’s amazing. When we arrived, it was really different. It seemed like the things that we see in the movies from the U.S. but I wasn’t expecting to be the same here but of course it’s so close. Like, the streets are super wide like, there’s not many people in the world. Everything is so calm and the forest around the Whitehorse is amazing. Like, there’s so many maps around the city; you can just basically choose which one you feel like doing today and all of them are like, 10 minutes ride or something like that. Or you can even go with the bikes. It’s amazing!”

Sanguino explained why she’s only here for a short time.

“Since I had to come with the visa – the reason I didn’t come earlier is the visa process took a long time to do it. Since I only saw the message from the friend ... I saw it really late. The whole process like interviewing and everything was super-fast, so we could try to make the visa as fast as we could and because it’s a visa I had to book the flights coming back home so I couldn’t stay for too long, unfortunately.

“I would love to come back. It’s amazing and there is so much to see, like, to do hiking and activities to do and I wanted to come in the winter too, because what people told me, in the winter it can get really cold weather and it seems different, it’s a new experience and I would love to try it out.”

This is the first coaching gig for Sanguino.

“I have been an athlete since 2014, (20)’12 ... and then I entered the national team in 2014 and since then I have been in the national team ... I have helped organizing national trainings with some younger people – not just for the national team but for everybody and for young kids but I have never actually coached people so young. Normally it would be 14-plus. Here in the Yukon I have kids which are seven years old, really young. I took all the experience as I had as an athlete and the experience that I had when I was helping to coach the other kids that I did. We had some training camps and stuff like that so I took that experience that I had and – I was never the one responsible but I always help out and helping organize the races. Of course, we have a lot of international races, so that also gets some experience.

“I’m really lucky because all of the kids there – they are amazing. They’re super-polite and that helps a lot.”

Sanguino doesn’t just coach kids, though.

“I have three groups of kids, so age 7-10, 10-14 and 14-15 and then I have two groups of adults. It’s Nav 101 and Nav 201 ... Nav 101 is people that never did orienteering before ... Nav 201 is people who already did Nav 101 but they want to keep practicing and improve.

“Most of them are super-enthusiastic and they just want to learn more and they are always asking questions and it’s amazing.”

Sanguino’s passion for orienteering was kindled at an early age.

“When I was younger, I used to do a lot of hiking and mountaineering with my parents and my father would get the map and I always sit by his side and I wanted to see how he would read the map ... topographic map, so not the same maps we use here. I always loved to look at the maps.

“My parents did orienteering before I was born and then in school, one of the teachers had a contact with one of the clubs in Portugal, so we started doing orienteering in school and I joined them and ... I love the sport and never stopped since then.

“It’s physically a passion. I love the challenge of when you have a new terrain in front of you and you don’t know – you have never been there. You just have a map and then you have to travel and I like – the things that you see on the map, they match what you see in reality ... and you just keep running and you try to go as fast as you can while reading the map and it’s a fun challenge. And you have so high-quality maps here. It’s just amazing. They are really challenging maps.”

Unlike in the Yukon, orienteering isn’t very popular in Portugal.

“No. I wouldn’t say that, unfortunately ... since we are a small country, we normally don’t have regional cups. We have, but they are not very popular, so every race that exists, everybody goes there, from all places of the country they go there.

“In a national race, we would have 400, 500 people, which is not much and people in the streets, if you are running, they don’t know what you’re doing, while here in Whitehorse, people know what you’re doing, which is amazing. So it’s not very common in Portugal ... not many schools have orienteering and I think that’s something we should try to do better, to captivate more kids.

“In Whitehorse, from what I’ve seen, they are doing ... so much training opportunities, so much racing, it’s amazing. Like the effort that they are doing here in Whitehorse is amazing.”

Sanguino added “I’m really thankful for the YOA. They are amazing. They have been so supportive of what I’m doing. Like, if I have any questions, people just help out and it’s amazing there. They’re super-welcoming and super-nice ... they support me with everything.”

Pia Blake, Erik’s daughter, has been a big help to Sanguino.

“She already did these courses. She was the coach a couple years before and she has been a huge help like, just giving me feedback if the practices would be good or not and she helped out from the beginning because I arrived (with) really short notice; I arrived the day before the first practice, so she helped out with the first ones and she organized everything and I just have to be there.

“They’re all super-nice. I’m loving it.

“Being here for two months and doing orienteering and going to the Canadians is like, amazing.”

Sanguino applied to study for her Masters in Product and System Design in Norway and was just accepted into the program.

Sanguino said she’d like to come back to the Yukon.

“I hope so. I really want to. It’s an amazing place. And I want to especially come in the winter, because I want to feel what it’s like to have a real winter, not a European winter.”