JROS

Junior Regional
Orienteering
Squads

Junior Regional
Orienteering Squads

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Generic information about Deeside

Location

The Deeside training camp is based at the Templar’s Park Scout Camp, Maryculter (http://www.templarspark.org.uk/ ). The site is only 8 miles from Aberdeen and is easily accessible from the A93.
The Deeside valley is rich in excellent orienteering areas such as Glen Feardar, Cambus O’May, Inchmarnoch, Creag Choinnich etc.

Accommodation

Accommodation is in two buildings, the George Smith centre and the White House. Both have a number of dormitories of various sizes and their own showers and toilets.
The tour chef prepares all the meals on site and specific dietary needs are catered for. Athletes will be expected to assist with minor chores during the camp.
The site is 45 acres in size so there is plenty of room for outdoor games.

Background

2013 was the first year that this site has been used for an extended camp, previously having been used by ScotJOS (The Scottish Junior Squad) for weekend trainings.
Although this is the first time that this location has been used for this tour similar camps have taken place since the late 1990’s based at Glenmore Lodge, Badaguish and Lagganlia.
The move to Maryculter has been largely prompted by restricted land access caused by the presence of capercaillie and WOC 2015 in the Spey valley.

Terrain

As indicated above there are many top class orienteering areas along the A93 from Braemar in the east to Aberdeen in the west. In addition to those mentioned above there are the areas of Bogendreip, Glen Dye, Scolty and Allt Cailleach all within easy reach of the centre.
These areas present different orienteering tests to the terrain in the Spey Valley and are seen as a suitable progression for the juniors.

Attendees

The camp is aimed at M/W16’s who have achieved the required standard in the nominated selection races (See Deeside Selection criteria). It is expected that up to 16 M/W16’s will attend
In support of the camp there is a Tour Manager (TM) who has responsibility for such things as travel, accommodation, food etc.
The TM is supported by a chef and a Lead Coach. The Lead Coach has a team of up to 8 coaches, providing an ample coach: athlete ratio.

Team Manager's Report

Staff: Iain Embrey (TM; safeguarding), Matthew Vokes (Lead Coach), Irene and Jakob Petersen (Chefs),

coaches: Rona Lindsay (safeguarding), Roger Thetford, Phil Vokes, Ben Windsor, Fay Walsh, Anne Ockenden, Fiona Petersen, Sam Fielding, Paul Pruzina, Zoe Harding (for two days – self funded).

Matthew Clarke

SUFFOC

Dominic Dakin

SYO

Luke Graham

MAROC

Oscar Healy

SBOC

Thomas Howell

SN

Finlay Johnson

SROC

Felix Lunn

OD

Oliver Lunn

OD

Louis McMillan

ECKO

William Thomas

MWOC

Adam Thorpe

EPOC

 

 

Kirsty Campbell

MAROC

Chloe Cracknell

SUFFOC

Mairi Eades

INT

Sarah Horsler

WIM

Sarah Pedley

EPOC

Rosie Spencer

WCOC

Mairi Weir

MOR

All 18 of the invited athletes attended. The balance of athletes with about 2/5s from the first year 16s and the remainder from the second years (some of whom were also on the equivalent tour last year) worked fine – this group was of a more homogenous ability than previous years.

A few minor injuries were sustained during tour, although most of these were pre-existing. Each was given appropriate treatment and suggestions for rehab – including rest, the use of ice-packs in the forest and back at base, and strengthening exercises. In each case the advice was to err on the side of caution, and rest if in doubt. Phil Vokes also had a minor collision with a rock whilst driving only coaches (Rona Lindsay and Paul Pruzina); this was at low speed with no injury, though the car’s radiator has been replaced.

The coaching team had a mixture of experience levels and skills, including four first-time coaches of whom three had just completed the JROS lv2 coaching course. The coaching team was larger than usual due to this course and the Scottish 6 days being based in Deeside, since it enabled some later additions who had essentially 0 expenses. As per the last few years we used a coaching group structure with 2/3 coaches taking primary responsibility for 4/5 athletes between them, which also served well to support the development of coaches who worked closely in these partnerships. The coaching groups were designed specifically to mix genders and regions, and with a mind to avoiding athletes having the same primary coach as during a previous tour. The coaches in charge of each team were also primarily responsible for compiling their athletes’ tour reports. These groups were also then used as the basis for duty teams for the week.

The duties listed below were slightly updated following feedback and reflection on previous years, and worked well. Further improvements would remove instances where B follows A, and take account of the lido day in the boy/girl showering rota.

Group No./

Names

1

2

3

4

 

Dominic

Luke

Chloe

Adam

 

Finlay

Mairi E

Felix

Kirsty

 

Mairi W

Rosie

Louis

Matt

 

Oliver

Thomas

Sarah P

Will

 

Sarah H

 

Oscar

 

Coaches:

Roger

Ben

Phil

Iain

 

Fay

Fiona

Rona

Sam

 

Paul

 

 

Annie

Duties:

A: Help cooks prep after dinner, and set up breakfast thereafter

B: Clear tables and wash up breakfast and set up dinner (8.30am)

C: Clear tables and wash up dinner (after dinner)

D: General Cleaning after dinner – either Showers, or GS/WH Toilets + Athlete area

Rotas:

GroupNo./

Day

1

2

3

4

Sat

 

 

A

C

Sun

B

C

D(S)

A

Mon

C

D(t+a)

A

B

Tues

D(S)

A

B

C

Wed

A

B

C

D(t+a)

Thurs

C

D(S)

B

A

Fri

D(t+a)

C

A

B

Sat by 09:30

All pack and clean own rooms

Sat duty + cleaning from 09:30

B + WH communal inc. toilet

clean GS communal inc. toilet

Clean showers

Clean Busses, then do recycling

 

Each day maintained the structure of:

8-8:30 Breakfast including making lunch - 9:00 Briefing in dining room - 10:00 in bed - 10:30 quiet lights out

and evening sessions were fitted around this. These times were 1 hour later on Tuesday (after the NightO around Templars), and 2 hours on Wednesday to facilitate rest after the Crathes NightO.

The evening sessions worked extremely well, with Full-speed – no-mistakes drawing together plan and picture and cueing direction, tech/tac/phys/psych facilitating self reflection including a personal draft auto-tour report, the physical training talk leading to each athlete producing and consulting on a personal physical training plan moving forwards, and the final night producing a postcard to be sent in 5 months’ time as a psychological boost. A core training taster session was included prior to the physical training planning, to aid the prescription of such exercises to athletes.

The Venue is extremely cost effective and quite fun.   A new wi-fi network was installed during our stay, also Vodafone now have good 4g coverage in the GS centre. Sadly the washing machine which we plumbed in last year has been removed – hints were made that it would be good to have one installed… this lead to greater tea-towel purchasing than we had hoped, although both Iain and Matthew brought some from home; these will be retained for use in future years.

Tour tops: “contrast vests” and medals were again sourced from frontrunner.org.uk. All coaches bought one of these (£9) and all athletes were provided with one.

SI equipment, stakes, and large kites were gratefully borrowed from WCOC by Matthew; GRAMP and MAROC were most kind in arranging ocad files and access for us without any charge. Some of the areas used were also Scottish 6 days training areas, to make permissions easier (as they had already been sorted). Iain supplied training kites, which were made up to the original number after tour. Iain now has 10 JROS radios, which, together with 4 from CUOC, enabled the full team to be connected at all times. This is a positive move in terms of safety and enabled us to amend plans due to poor weather much more readily. GPS trackers from SOA were also opportunistically used to provide extra excitement for Tour Champs races.

The areas used were fantastic on the whole, with the new areas (to the tour) of Balnagowan and Tilquhillie performing at least as well as expected. Next year there will be greater selection of areas to choose from as the embargos for the 6 days will no longer be in force! The picture day at Balmedie worked brilliantly, but could have been enhanced by brown only maps at a slightly larger scale.

The tour outline worked very well, and is provided below. All exercises were planned new for this year (and hence the presence of athletes who had also attended last year was not an issue), with 1 coach taking responsibility for planning each day. The exercises were completely separate from the Scottish 6 days training and the presence of some additional controls out in the forest did not seem to cause any issues for either our athletes or those using the training areas.

 BML printers were duly credited on our tour tops for their continued and valued support, and Turner hiredrive once again supplied vehicles in a highly cost effective manner. We managed with only hiring two 9 seaters thanks to the use of Roger’s people carrier.

Feedback from others:

Phil noted that coaching groups of 4 worked better than 5 in terms of keeping track etc – I agree  and suspect that this  is also the case for duty groups… we will look into the feasibility of 3s/4s next year.

From Ben:

* I thought Rona's day and way of explaining plan was awesome - it delivered a really clear message and I think we should do this again next year and give them the little bits of paper to go in description holders even if Rona isn't planning that day.

* GPS tracking didn't gain us anything from a coaching point of view I don't think, but it does mean that anybody who is selected for EYOC/JWOC won't have to wear a tracker for the first time ever during the competition. This probably isn't that useful anyway since we're unlikely to have it in future years unless we go to special effort to borrow it from SOA.

* Not being able to shadow people meant my feedback to athletes was of far poorer quality (in my opinion) than last year - however I think I could have got more than I did from questioning people at the start/finish area if we'd done the goal setting/training plan session earlier in the week. Probably not right at the very start, but maybe after Day 2 would be good. It was a good chance to talk to athletes about what they really want from orienteering rather than finding that out at the end of the week when you don't have any more chances to coach them.

* Iain sort of verbally took it out during the presentation, but we shouldn't have the step of sharing your goals with a partner in the goal setting presentation - they can talk to each other about it anyway if they want to without being asked, and keep it private if they want to.

* I think the sequence of training and the areas we used were good, it did feel like we had one less day of training than last year because the orientathlon wasn't really a coaching exercise and I don't think the athletes learned much from it, but it was fun which is also important!    

 

Sat
22nd

Sun
23rd

Mon
24th

Tues
25th

Wed
26th

Thur
27th

Fri
28th

Sat
29th

 

Arrival

 

 

 

Easy Day

 

Tour Champs

Departure

Day Area

 

Balnagowan

Balmedie

Glen Dye

Tilqhuille

Scolty

Glen Dye

 

Overarching Theme

 

Plan

Picture

Direction

Race Prep / Speed

The Whole Thing Together

Tour Champs

Pack, tidy, and clean :D

Evening Session

Introductions

Sprint Tour Champs

Full speed; no mistakes

Tech/Tac/Phys/Psych +reflection

Performance (laces)

Physical training; personal planning

Reflection & goal setting

 

Other activities

Sprint Qualifier

 

Intro to night O (Templars site)

Night O (Crathes)

 

 

Party J

 

Shower Rota

Girls

Boys

Girls

Boys

Lido

Girls

Coaches then boys

 

 

Selections

Matthew Clarke SUFF
Dominic Dakin SYO
Luke Graham MAROC
Oscar Healy SBOC
Thomas Howell SN
Finlay Johnson SROC
Felix Lunn OD
Oliver Lunn OD
Louis McMillan ECKO
William Thomas MWOC
Adam Thorpe EPOC

Kirsty Campbell MAROC
Chloe Cracknell SUFFOC
Mairi Eades INT
Sarah Horsler WIM
Sarah Pedley EPOC
Rosie Spencer WCOC
Mairi Weir MOR

Selection Policy

Date

The camp will run from 22nd-29th July 2017
(Athletes selected for the British Orienteering Talent Camp would not be expected to be selected for this camp)

Eligibility

The camp is for M/W16’s born in 2001 and M/W15’s born in 2002

Numbers

The camp will be for around 18 athletes, the final number being determined by the Selectors and the Team Manager.

Criteria

Athletes wishing to be selected will have achieved the standards set out below in the following races;

Northern Championships 2017 (26th February)
Midland Championships 2017 (26th March)
JK Day 2 2017 (15th April)
JK Day 3 2017 (16th April)
British Long Distance Champs 2017 (6th May)

Standard for selection

Athletes will be selected based upon their average percentage of time behind the winner. Their best three results will be considered.

The selectors may choose not to fill all available places.

The tour selectors

The tour athletes will be selected by Susan Marsden (Chair), Pauline Olivant and Sue Roome.

Selections will be published as soon as possible after the 6th May.

Illness or Injury

All cases of illness or injury which may affect an athlete’s ability to compete in one of the above selection races should be notified in writing to the athletes Regional Squad coordinator prior to the running of that race, clearly explaining the reasons for their failure to compete. The Regional Squad Coordinator will make the Selectors aware of such notifications.