WOW what a busy July we have had – and we haven’t even had a Board meeting! Our athletes have been racing hard at the NZ Secondary School Champs (thanks PAPO for organising). We also have had athletes competing overseas in Genoa, Italy for WOC – check out Orienteering Wellington’s club post about one of the World Champs knock-out sprint semi-final […]

It’s pretty exciting with the international orienteering season kicking off. The second World Cup race took place over the weekend and saw our relay team finish 14th, just behind the Australian team.  Luckily overall our team ranking remains ahead of Australia. Auckland Orienteering Club hosted the Triple Crown & King’s Birthday Competition over the long weekend […]

It’s been so great connecting with many of you over the last month, at nationals, and also at the AGM on Wednesday. It’s always great to get your viewpoints and feedback and as I mentioned at the AGM, please get in touch with any of the Board, Christo (General Manager) or any of the ONZ […]

As I write this I should be packing for Nationals, I’m super excited about the weekend and look forward to seeing many of you there. The Board (and especially Christo and Joolz) have been busy pulling the annual report together for 2025 and it’s been such a pleasure to sit back and read over the […]

The Board have had a number of discussions over the last year about home school students and their keenness to be able to compete fully in School Sport New Zealand (SSNZ) sanctioned events. Of ONZ Our North Island, South Island and National Secondary School competitions are SSNZ sanctioned events. SSNZ changed their rules in November last year […]

I hope you all had some time to relax over the summer. The orienteering year is gearing up with evening summer series after work throughout the country. At our Board meeting a few days ago we signed off the Business Plan and budget for 2026. A main area of investment is in the schools and junior area […]

As we come to the end of the year and the winding down of events it’s a cool opportunity to reflect on the year. I hope you take some time to reflect on your own orienteering achievements and the contribution you have made to your club (or at a national level) – thankyou! Our junior and high […]

Looks like we’ve just punched through another month! We are in the thick of our regional championships. I had the pleasure of attending the Pokopū Champs last weekend near Whanganui, racing around in the beautiful forest maps of Knottingly and Koitiata. It was so neat to see two traditionally smaller clubs (Red Kiwis and Hutt Valley) come […]

I’ll start this month’s compass point update with how we finished our recent Board meeting with BEST WISHES to the Southern Cross and Pine Stars Teams heading over to Queensland shortly to compete against the Australians. In total the juniors heading over from New Zealand make up about a third of the field, including the […]

As a Board we are focused on refreshing our strategy as the current one runs through to the end of the year. We are currently finalising a draft which will be sent to members in the next week or so, with an invitation to join us in about late September to a club forum to get your […]

Over the last month there has been a lot of orienteering. We have had national teams competing at WOC, JWOC and EYOC, with a great contingent of people supporting them in person. Zefa, Tim and Joe all had exceptional runs in the WOC relay resulting in 9th – New Zealand’s best ever WOC relay result. […]

It seems crazy that we are halfway through the year already. The international competition season is underway with our representative athletes competing in the first World Cup races and JWOC races are imminent. Joolz is doing a great job of showcasing on social media our athletes who are over there. I wasn’t able to get up […]

It was great to have two new members of the Board at our last meeting, Dave Stewart and Sara Prince. Their orienteering and professional experiences will complement the Board well. For a number of years clubs and orienteering members have mentioned ideas about how ONZ could support clubs to develop more orienteering in schools and with school […]

It’s hard to believe we are almost into March! We have an exciting year ahead for orienteering, Nationals at Easter hosted by PAPO is just around the corner. Many of our athletes will also be getting into their training in preparation for summer orienteering in Europe. Our selectors have been busy choosing our international teams. A big […]

For the 750 people who attended Oceania. I wish I had been there but unfortunately this time I was unable to attend. A young family and other commitments meant we couldn’t quite make it work. What an amazing effort from everyone involved, from the organisers through to all the competitors – what a great way to […]

It’s hard to believe a year has gone by. The Board had a planning session in November to consider and develop the business plan for 2025. Much of our work will continue as an organisation but with an emphasis on some key items. These include: Please do engage with the draft business plan, we would […]

I’ve been very envious of the school teams, support crew and other NZ orienteers who have just been away in Australia. It’s not just running around a course that I love about orienteering, I have always enjoyed the opportunity to hang out with friends and fellow orienteers in places you’d probably never travel to for […]

It’s been great getting back into ONZ stuff after a couple of months off with a newborn. It never ceases to amaze me the incredible people we have in our community who commit time and their professional skills to support our sport to improve and thrive. Our schools team are now in Australia for the Southern […]

With many of our major domestic and international events behind us we’re now at the time of year where ONZ put their planning hats on and invite members and clubs to share ideas and visions for the year(s) ahead. The opportunity to do this is via 2 ONZ facilitated forums – the Club Presidents and […]

The Board met last week and health and safety has been a focus, especially with a couple of recent serious incidents at events we will be sharing the learnings from reviewing these. Spoiler alert…the clubs on the ground had excellent responses and are great examples of good practice to share. At the Board level we’ve had […]

After a flurry of team selections in the last few months we are now seeing the first of the New Zealand teams represent us overseas with the Orienteering World Cup races in Olten Switzerland. As I write the individual sprints are shortly about to take place. International races coming up include World Cup round 2 […]

It’s only a matter of sleeps now until Nationals and events on the much anticipated Crater Block Rerewhahaaitu map. It’s also so neat to see so many people attending Nationals. It’s not just for our elites. I love seeing the competition between people in all the grades. I’m so impressed with the numbers coming from what used to […]

We’ve kicked off the year with a bang with Oceania and a great set of sprints in Taranaki and Auckland. We had so many orienteers from around New Zealand competing it was so great so many people made the effort to travel. Auckland’s recent competitions are attracting huge numbers. All of these are reflected in our […]

It’s such a privilege to be able to lead the board of a sport that has given me so much over the years: friends, experiences and fun times on a map. If you don’t know me well, I ABSOLUTELY LOVE ORIENTEERING!! At the top of the Board’s list for the start of the year was […]

Tell us what it was like orienteering from an early age and what it has led to?  Orienteering in Nelson 30 years ago we had the option of black and white maps or colour maps. Many of the controls were painted ice-cream containers with the clipper hung dangling inside the container. Club orienteering in Nelson led […]

Congratulations on many years as chair of ONZ. What kept you going over five years? What has made the combined ONZ Board purpose and your role of chair meaningful? The role of Chair has definitely taken a lot of time and energy, so it has needed to have some meaning in order to fuel that. In my case the thing that […]

Big congratulations to Hawkes bay Orienteering for hosting a very successful NZ Orienteering Champs over Labour weekend. Jane Herries, James Watson and the team pulled off an impressive achievement, having had their plans for hosting Nationals at Easter severely disrupted following the awful damage caused by Cyclone Gabrielle in February. I remember talking with Jane and […]

Read more at: https://mailchi.mp/orienteering.org.nz/compass-point-september-2023 M e m b e r n e w s & v i e w s | S E P T E M B E R 2 0 2 3 U p d a t eNotes from the GMView from the Chair E v e n t R e vi e […]

It was fantastic to be part of the NZ contingent that travelled to Australia to compete in the Australian MTBO Champs  a few weeks ago. This included riders selected to represent NZ in the ANZ challenge – the first time this has taken place since 2019, following the disruption covid created in the last 3 years. […]

It has been a super exciting month with many orienteers competing overseas (so many I started to wonder if anyone was left in NZ!), and some great results by a number of elite, junior, and age grade orienteers – all covered in detail elsewhere in this compass point, so won’t detail here other than to […]