Awesome Orienteering

By Menzie Saker

Kia ora, my name is Menzie. Last weekend on Sunday, me and my mate Noah Crannitch competed for Tahuna in an orienteering event at Forrester Park.

Orienteering is a super fun sport for all ages and levels. You have to choose between different levels: white (easy), yellow (medium) and orange (hard), we did yellow which was the intermediate level. You have a map which has numbered circles showing where each checkpoint is and a compass. The aim is to find all the checkpoints in number order as quick as possible, using a compass to map-read. I was on the compass and Noah was on the map and beeper.

We had done a couple orienteering events before but not competitively and always with an adult, and I was a bit nervous. We arrived and got signed up, though later on when we got our results we realized that they had spelt Noah’s name wrong: Noash.

They let people go every minute so we grabbed our map and beeper (I don’t know its actual name but it was the thing that you inserted into every checkpoint for timings) and got ready on the starting line. We waited a very long 60 seconds and then we were off.

We found the first checkpoint which was an orange and white box, put the beeper in, checked the map and compass and we were on our way again. It continued like that for another 24 minutes when we arrived, puffed, hot and tired at the finish flag. We sprinted up to the van and got our results printed on a receipt-like piece of paper. Slowly, we walked back to the car, grabbed some food, collapsed on the hill and called the mums who were doing a harder course. 6 minutes later after we were all refreshed from some cold water, muffins and mandarins we were looking at our times and we realized - we hadn’t scanned the beeper in the finish flag - we had run straight to the van instead! We jumped up and ran over to that same van and told them what we had done. But there was nothing we could do about it except put the beeper in the finish checkpoint and reprint it with our time being 30 minutes. DAMN!

We got the results a few days later; we had come 15th, though we actually would have placed 10th - rookie mistake. I will definitely continue orienteering, it’s a fun and challenging event I can do with my mates.

-Menzie