Orienteering – a fun sport where you run around, hunting for tags and racing other people to collect every tag first. Thanks to Counties Manukau Orienteering, all the Year 7 – 9 students (the Year 10s day was cancelled due to the weather) at SMC got the amazing opportunity to spend a day learning how the sport works.
Running, jogging or walking. You can do any of these in this Swedish sport. The Year 7s, 8s and 9s have all enjoyed orienteering last week. There was 1 activity per period – ensuring a fun filled day with plenty of different activities. Sadly, due to bad weather the Year 10s orienteering day got cancelled. But for the rest of us, navigating your way around the school with maps was tricky at first but we all soon got the hang of it.
Most of the activities included maps – and plenty of them ended up making us run all the way to the edge of the field, only to find we had to dash to D block for the next control point. But thankfully, we were allowed to walk if we were tired.
Three activities were similar – we had to join with buddies, get an answer sheet and a map, then take turns going to the different stations where the red circles on the map said to go. When we each got to the station (or control), we made sure first that it was the right one before punching it with the special hole punch attached to the control.
Another activity was learning how to draw hills and hollows on the map. We took an example and had to draw it in the sandpit. ‘Seek and Find’ was a hard game where one partner places an object somewhere according to the map and another partner uses the map to find the same object.
Overall, they were brilliant days for all the students who took part, and we would like to thank everyone who gave up their time organising this fun event, as well as Counties Manukau Orienteering for coming to Sancta Maria College, teaching us about orienteering and giving us a break from school work. We look forward to doing this again next year!
Cyprus Causer and Alanna Santoso
