Course planning is one of the most significant roles when organising an orienteering event. The job of the course planner is to design the courses that the participants will complete. They work along-side or under the guidance of the controller. The controller has deep knowledge of the rules and experience that will help ensure quality, fairness and safety, but it is the planner who will apply their orienteering experience and creativity to create the courses.
Guides
ONZ has a guide for forest/farm course planning, with guides for sprint and MTBO to come.
This guide covers:
- Purpose of a leg
- Purpose of a control
- Purpose of a course
- How to make a start
- The event as a whole
- Quality white courses
- Quality yellow courses
- Quality orange courses
- Quality red courses
- Overall course shape
- Traps to avoid
- Major don’ts
Presentations
ONZ has a presentations for forest/farm and for sprint course planning, which are used for training workshops. You can use these as a reference or to run your own training sessions.
Course planning challenge
Tackle this course planning challenge as a practice if you are new to planning or a refresher if you’ve been a planner before. This will help improve your skills before you set courses for a real event and also help your own orienteering as you work through the process. The guide above will be helpful to inform your process and in assessing your own work.
Send your finished courses to an experienced course planner in your club for feedback.
Part 1: Create a set of courses
Course 1: Red, 6km, middle distance style.
Course 2: Orange, 4km, middle distance style.
Course 3: Yellow, 3km.
Course 4: White, 3km.
All courses must use the same start, last control, and taped route to the finish.
Part 2: Consider the event as a whole
Write a page to explain aspects of your courses:
- Choice of terrain and main navigational challenges for each course.
- Choice of finish location and how this works for spectators, tents, and parking.
- Any Assumptions and your reasoning around them. – Since this is virtual and you will not be visiting the competition area, you are welcome to make any assumptions in your planning process.
ONZ Rules
The ONZ competition rules provide definitions and basic principles for course planning in section 16.
IOF control description specifications
IOF provides the rules for symbolic control descriptions.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram
YouTube
