Coaching day review Sept 2022
Credit: Lakeland Orienteering Club
We were very pleased to support a fifth Orienteering Foundation coaching day in the Lake District in September 2022, kindly organised again by Derek Allison.
Derek took charge of the organisation at Burnt Wood Plantation, part of Graythwaite, as used for elite and local events in the last few years. See details for the day here. 19 individual adult participants were coached by Derek, another 46 in groups from PFO, LOC, CLOK and NN. It was the same weekend as the Junior Inter-Regional Championships in Northern Ireland, allowing the coaching day to focus predominantly on adult coaching, which is an often unserved area.
This was the fifth coaching day we have run. The sun shone, and the compact area of forest provided excellent terrain for practicing detailed navigation through complex rock and contour detail.
As with previous coaching days, Derek secured permissions, chose and checked control sites, provided OCAD map files, Purple Pen course files, a risk assessment template, and hung and collected the controls on the day. All the group leaders had to worry about was planning exercises appropriate to their group, then getting their group members and then concentrate on delivering the best possible coaching to their group!
Some selected comments from individuals, group leaders and group members:
Thanks for the coaching day on Saturday. It was not only useful (I hope), but also enjoyable.
I just wanted to say a big thank you on behalf of the PFO crowd - we all had a great day yesterday. It's always great to be able to bring our members to an area which is so different to those on our doorstep. It was the first time o'ing in that sort of terrain for a few of them and they went away feeling very proud of themselves for tackling it! Your organisation was great, as always!
Given the continued interest in coaching days, we would hope to stage further ones in the Lakes. We would also be interested in supporting coaching days in other parts of the UK. If you might be interested in organising such a day with our support, please get in touch with Duncan Archer (email hidden; JavaScript is required) or any of the Orienteering Foundation ambassadors or trustees.