What’s in this Issue

• View from the Chair
• ONZ Committee Vacancies- Round 2
• Years 5-8 Orienteering Camp – Registrations Open
• 2018 Council Elections – Advance Notice
• Entries for National Championships & reminder for Trophies to be returned
• High Performance Update
• Event Liaison Update
• ONZ Policy Updates
• Anti-Match-Fixing and Sports Betting Policy
• Orienteering Photos

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View from the Chair –

During mid September Council held its annual face to face meeting in Wellington. Whilst the agenda is always full and we constantly battle against time constraints, there is so much to benefit from the opportunity to interact formally and socially.

Given that our new constitution has had some time to get bedded in, we felt that it was an appropriate point at which to reflect on how things were working and identify areas where assistance or intervention may be needed. So the main focus was on the effectiveness of our existing structure including Committees and succession planning to ensure Council could perform to expectation. In between we managed to approve the 2018-19 Business Plan and also the budget for the forthcoming year.

We spent some time on considering whether Mountain Bike Orienteering and Rogaining needed specific committees as many of their needs are provided by other committees. We eventually decided a change of structure of the groups to MTBO Liaison and Rogaine Liaison may be better to achieve our strategic outcomes. We think linking both groups closer to our ONZ Event Liaison, Russell Higham, to ensure that he was involved with their programmes and events will help integrate both groups better into the ONZ family. We will consult with both MTBO and Rogaining Committees to ensure they are comfortable with this slight change of course. We also recognised the importance of having a visible succession plan in place for replacing Council members.

Under our constitution, two members are due to stand down at the AGM in 2018 and with one Council position remaining unfilled, we will have up to three vacancies. Very shortly we will commence notification of the future election process and timelines and will reinforce this during the Club Forum at Nationals.

Council were treated to an excellent presentation by Rachel Froggatt of Paralympics NZ who provided us with an insight on how she managed to secure considerable funding to take an NZ team to the 2016 Paralympics. She took us through the journey from understanding your sport’s offering to identifying potential partners and working with them to jointly promote both their companies and importantly the Paralympian sport stars. The presentation really helped us identify what a wonderful offering our sport could provide and opened us numerous ideas over possible targets.

There’s plenty happening over the next few months. ONZ has just gone out inviting expression of interest from clubs to work with ONZ to host JWOC in 2021 or 2022. We have a survey underway seeking views around some of the timing of key major events and given the appearance of some new event formats within our calendar, the need to retain some of the older more traditional regional championships.

Next month sees our National Championships in Hawkes Bay and also our Club Forum where we can explain some of the projects underway at ONZ and listen to some of your more pressing needs. I look forward to seeing and talking to many of you over the Labour weekend.

Finally best wishes to all those venturing to the Aus Champs and to the MTBO Champs  and especially to our NZSS teams. Enjoy yourselves, your trip and experience and give your best.

David Turner
Chair ONZ Council

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ONZ Committee Vacancies – Round 2

The first term of the ONZ Committee members are now up for renewal.

Each committee has slightly different appointment criteria and member numbers.  We have replaced some committee members in the last year, so these are not up for renewal.

We are now inviting applications for the second round for the Selection Panels, Technical and Mapping committees.

• Junior Selectors
• Senior Selectors
• Technical Committee
• Mapping Committee

Full position descriptions for all these roles are available on the Orienteering NZ website.

Applications close 1 November 2017.

Please forward your application to gm@orienteering.org.nz

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Years 5-8 Orienteering Camp – Registrations Open

The 2017 Years 5-8 Orienteering camp will be held in Rotorua this year from the 19-22 December.

Information about the camp including the registration form are available from:
http://www.obop.org.nz/junior-camp-2017.html

Closing date for registration is 15 November. The camp is limited to 60 participants and registration will close before this date if this limit is reached.

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2018 Council Elections – Advance Notice

3 vacancies for Council Members will be advertised shortly.

Applications will open on 1 October and close on 31 January 2018.

The election will be via Postal Vote in February/March with the announcement made before the 2018 AGM at Easter.

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Entries for the National Championships are now open.

Hawkes Bay have created some new maps with a maze of valleys and water courses, a plethora of route choices and a very picturesque arboretum!

click here for more 

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ONZ Trophies

A reminder to all 2016 National Champions to please bring your ONZ trophies to this years National Championships in October.  If you are unable to attend in person, we would appreciate it if you can arrange for your trophy to be delivered on your behalf.  Don’t forget to get your name engraved on the trophy before you return it.

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High Performance Update

Now that WOC and JWOC are over for another year it has been time to assess where we stand. A considerable analysis was included in the last High Performance News, but two of the issues that stand out are that, firstly, even our top athletes find the long distance races at these events much tougher than is generally presented at home, and, secondly, there is a clear indication that our top runners do not get enough opportunity to race in high pressure relays.

Perhaps to address these issues we need a slight rethink of some of the basics in the New Zealand orienteering rules. So, how about:

1   let’s increase the recommended winning times for long distance events for M21E and W21E (and arguable M20 and W20). One suggestion would be 105 minutes for M21E and 90 minutes for W21E. Although the tail ends of the fields would then be out for a really long time, there are 21A grades at most major events for those in this category, and these times represent the minimum times that NZL athletes are going to have to run for in the WOC long distance. The ONZ Champs is generally the WOC trial, so let’s, at the very least, bring this in for the 2018 Champs in Auckland.

2    The present format of the ONZ Relay Champs does nothing to prepare our athletes for international relays. Let’s add another class – an elite relay with all 3 legs of equal length, red difficulty, and teams to contain both men and women. Everyone else can still run in the Red Long relay, but this additional class would be the true National Relay Champs and would cater for the elites and the top juniors. Again, let’s start in 2018. Yes, orienteering is about more than the elites, but surely we can do some restructuring that will better prepare us for international competition.

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Event Liaison Update

Health and Safety

This is a big issue for ONZ. When conducting our sport must take all actions reasonably practicable not to put people at risk. Also landowners (forestry managers, Councils, campus owners, some farmers) may require us to have  a Safety Management System (SMS) before we can play at their place.

Clubs also need to be assured where the issue of culpability lies when incidents happen – this may never be completely resolved until tested in court. Hopefully our system will give clubs a better understanding of the Law.

Rather than clubs developing their own SMS, ONZ is committed to providing a template that is easy to understand, comprehensive, but simple to use.

To create our SMS we have;

• Attended forums on this subject which were facilitated by the NZ Recreational Association and the Ministry of Education (in relation to school sports),
• researched formats from other organisations and,
• have gathered information of best practise from our clubs.

We now have all the information we need to produce the system, stitched it all together, and are in the process of structuring it to make it easy to use.

Events

The major events annual calendar for 2018 is almost complete, we now only need to find a club to put on the NZ secondary schools Rogaine champs. The calendar can be viewed here.

We in the processing of reviewing the way we award, and carry out Major events. Please have your say by completing a survey here. It will only take about 7 minutes.

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ONZ Policy Updates

In 2014 ONZ introduced a new policy manual covering all aspects of orienteering business.  These policies were developed in consultation with members.  Each policy has a review date.  While some of these dates have passed, ONZ is now commencing an ongoing rolling review process of policies to ensure they are accurate, current and represent best practice while achieving the outcomes originally intended.

Because this process is going to be ongoing, ONZ is now providing notice to all clubs if they have any feedback, suggestions or comments on policies being reviewed, to please forward them to the General Manager in a timely manner.

A list of the policies to be reviewed first can be found on the ONZ website.

This list will be regularly updated so please ensure you continue to check out what is being reviewed.

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Anti-Match-Fixing and Sports Betting Policy

In May 2014, the then Minister of Sport and Recreation, Murray McCully, announced a new policy on Sports Match-Fixing and Related Corruption. The policy is a pre-emptive step to safeguard our athletes and to protect and uphold the integrity and reputation of New Zealand Sport. An important part of this policy requires all NSOs to adopt their own Anti-Match-Fixing and Sports Betting Policy.

To assist in the process, Sport NZ developed a comprehensive model policy for NSOs which ONZ has adapted to fit our capacity and capability and align with our sport.

Please note, given the policy is based on the SportNZ policy which is clear around legal requirements, there has been some adaptation but we are limited as to how far we can adapt the policy.  In particular the procedures have been specifically written to ensure there are clear and concise guidelines around dealing with any breaches of the policy and consistency across sports within the country.

The ONZ draft Anti-Match-Fixing and Sports Betting Policy is now available for member consultation and review.  Click here

Deadline for feedback to gm@orienteering.org.nz – 30 September 2017

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Still Wanted … Orienteering Photos

We are wanting good looking images that reflects orienteering in NZ to update our website.  We know lots of you do take photos of events etc and we’d love to use your photos on our website.

To fit the ONZ website banner we need images which will fit the narrow band size 1366px x 304px. (or better e.g.  2732px x 600px or  5464px x 1200px)

If you have any images you are willing to share please send them to webmaster@orienteering.org.nz

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Keeping you more informed

ONZ has updated its enewsletter database which now allows you to chose which areas are of special interest to you – such as High Performance, Technical, Mapping.

To update your email list Preferences, please Click Here.

We welcome your feedback at any time.

Our mailing address is:
gm@orienteering.org.nz