Welcome to the home page for STATE LEAGUE 1 & 2 which was held at Lidsdale on Saturday 28 March 2009 and Ophir on Sunday, 29 March 2009.

Details of each event can be found below:

State League 1 and 2 was orienteering at its best.  The NSW Junior Development Squad was out in force, a number of NSW and ACT elite big guns were there and 200 or so of the regulars were present.

On the Saturday afternoon, Big Foot and Western Plains combined forces to organise the first state league event for the year.  This was held at Lidsdale State Forest, about 13km west of Lithgow.  The terrain was mainly mature pine forests with some areas of eucalypt forest around the edges.  There were some reasonably steep sections which took a toll on the times towards the latter part of the races. 

Course setter Stephen Craig, well utilised the map by setting a series of elegant courses through the compartment track network in the forest.  The start was cleverly set amongst a series of closely spaced tracks.  The tight track network at the start challenged a number of competitors and cost valuable time, particularly those a bit rusty in their first bush run since October last year. 

The pine forest was generally fast, although there was quite alot of pine debris on the ground in parts which slowed things down and zapped energy from competitors before the climb up the hill home.  Route choice was a critical issue as there was some nice fast tracks to choose from which had to be weighed up against the fickle debris cover on the forest floor.

The forest was alive with wildlife with large kangaroos, yellow tailed black cockatoos and there were some reptiles spotted by Peter Annetts enjoying the sun.

On Sunday, the state league moved to the event organised by Garingal at Ophir Diggings.  Course setter James Lithgow extracted every ounce of value out of the map.  Competitors were taken into a large quarry like feature which had a complexity of erosion gullies and stone piles and a multitude controls from different courses.  There seemed to be a gathering of competitors at this part of the course. 

There was also a bunch of tightly spaced controls amongst a series of deep adits and pits cut into the hill.  These controls required close concentration and a number of competitors were drawn down the hill earlier than required.  And finally but not to be missed, for most courses there was a number of long legs home which used the vertical attributes of the terrain.

There were some notable performances.  Ross Barr managed double firsts in the M60 for the weekend.  Mark Brindley and Ernest Windschuttel did very well in the Open B.  Alex Massey from Newcastle Club aced the M18A division in 2 very quick times.  Gordon Wilson cleaned up on both days in M55A as did Shannon Jones in W21A and Margaret Peel in W21AS.  Mark Darvodelsky and Melvyn Cox swapped positions for the days on M50A.  Barbara Hill, Sybille Boos, Linda Sesta and Karen Blatchford split their positions over the 2 days in a hotly contested division.  Julian Dent and Josh Blatchford went head to head in the M21A.  Nearly every division from 10N to 75A had some great tussles for positions and augers well for the rest of the year.  The best thing is to trawl through the results and splits to get the full picture.

It was also great to see Julian Dent and Rob Fell providing some training tips to the older members of the NSW junior development squad after the event on Saturday. 

Should you have any enquiries about the event, please call Ken and Carol Jacobson on (02) 9871 5443 or by email at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .