Garingal teams remain undefeated in 5 of the 6 divisions after a soggy second round of the Sydney MetrO League on Sunday.
Bennelong found a great new assembly area - the completely rebuilt Manly Vale Public School - as a starting point to explore the southern reaches of their magnificent Manly Dam map.
It rained all day, fogging up reading glasses, making the tracks and bare rock rather slippery, and generally ensuring there was no mood for route choice discussion in these covid times.
But it was so good being back in Sydney bush four months since ML kicked off in warm, sunny weather at Castle Hill - remember those days?
Toby Wilson (D1), Cooper Horley (D2), Adam Horley and John Bulman (D4) lead the individual points tallies as well.
With no finals in divisions 2-5 due to losing a round in April, there will be no second chances for teams that slip up. The next round is on Sunday August 16 at Ruse.
Thank you to our Treasurer, Istvan Kertesz, who has put his running shoes on and with Nikki Halmai's help, conquered the vagaries of GPS-driven course setting on a GPS-referenced map at Chatswood West. Plus, thank you to Carol Jacobson for doing all the mapping side of things for this creative suite.
Notably, any mapper should be cognizant of the GPS situation whenever they put pen to paper to draw a particular feature onto a map. Alas, back when most of our city maps were created, the digitisation of maps to integrate with global position systems as part and parcel of eventing was never envisaged. Plus, the challenges of mapping Sydney sandstone configurations, has led to some 'mapper's licence'. Hence, creating MapRun-compatible courses require lots (and lots and lots) of checking.
Garingal now presents another series of 5 courses at Chatswood West using the smartphone app MapRunF.
- For instructions how to obtain and set up MapRunF click here, and head from there to the courses.
- To go direct to the Chatswood West courses click here.
At the ONSW AGM this long weekend Mike Ridley-Smith (photo on left, a member of GO) stepped down from his role on the ONSW Board for over 4 years as a Director and looking after the Marketing portfolio. A big thank you to Mike for his long service and for offering his expertise learnt in the corporate wold of marketing. Mike was the only representative from Garingal on the Board over this time, which is something we should address because we are the largest club in NSW and could look to greater representation.
Thankfully Jamie Kennedy (photo on right) has stepped up to the plate to take a position as Director on the Board of ONSW. Good on you Jamie! With Jamie also on the Garingal Committee, we look forward to good connections between GO and ONSW.
The new President is Robyn Pallas from Central Coast Orienteers, and the new Secretary is Mary-Jane Mahoney from Uringa: We welcome them aboard. Whilst it is nice to see a better spread of clubs represented at executive level, I do want to note our sincere thanks to the outgoing executives Greg Barbour (President), Rob Spry (Secretary) and Mark Shingler (Finance Director). Their jobs are not easy. With 11 clubs in NSW for most of their period of service, half regional and half in Sydney, it is quite difficult to deliver equitable service. To their credit, the Annual Report (available here) indicates an amazing array of activities that the ONSW has either delivered from the ONSW Office, or facilitated being rolled out across the clubs in NSW. The whole Board deserves a big clap and our thanks for keeping our sport healthy and growing in numbers due to their diligence and professional approach to what in the scheme of things is a very small and relatively unknown sport.
Barbara Junghans
