Coaching by Wimborne Orienteers

The state of play in Dorset: a grass roots view from coaches and others involved

 

John Warren

My involvement with coaching has been mostly to do with Moors Valley. Having successfully got the Moors Valley Rangers some basic Instructor qualifications I have concentrated on coaching beginner on the regular monthly Saturday sessions. This has continued for some years with lots of interest at the time but few people coming on into the sport. Exceptions are Kath Pike, Becca Ellis and Nathaniel Clelland all of whom are active members. I have also run some corporate courses eg for John Lewis (Southampton) where I did a one day course starting with basic instruction and culminating in a 45 minute score using the POC.

Part of Moors Valley POC

Hilary Pickering

The following have been done by Kirsty, Debs and myself with mapping and help from John Warren.

March 2011 - 6x1 1/2hrs at Hale school as an afterschool club with children from Hyde school also attending (12 pupils). The following year we had 3 Hale children come to Dorset schools events and Hyde children really went back and enthused others to come to schools events and they went on to become schools champions in 2012 and several families are now members of the club.

July 2012 - 6x 1 1/2 hrs at Breamore school as an after school club with a couple from Hyde as well (14 pupils). We set up a permanent orienteering course in school grounds and John Warren mapped and we used the marsh area behind the school as well. The school said they then wanted to continue in school time and we left them resources to be able to do this. (Head and staff we dealt with have now changed so need to re-establish contact to see what present position is).

July 2013- Afternoon of orienteering at Burgate Secondary school, Fordingbridge for year 6 feeder schools and Yr 7 Burgate pupils to introduce and enjoy orienteering and for Yr 6 pupils to become familiar with school grounds before they joined in September (80 pupils) Have good relations with staff and we will be repeating the afternoon on June 16th this year.

February 2014. Afternoon at Moyles Court Independent School, Ringwood. 16 Chinese secondary students on an exchange and their English counterparts. Exercises in orientation, map work and compass work followed by course running around the school grounds.

May 2014 - 1 1/2 days at Ashley Junior school with 30 Yr 4 children (Debs) . Basic mapping techniques, orientation, exercises and courses around the school grounds and related maths work.

Chris Branford

The main coaching outside club work used to be the Purbeck Pyramid but this fell apart when Adrian Mitchell moved to take up his headship.  It struggled for a while but none of the staff in any of the schools was prepared to take a lead.  Unfortunately I think a lot of the problem was the re-organisation of the pyramid and several of the staff were very uncertain about their future.

However, it looks as though we will be restarting coaching in the Autumn.  Shelley Hamblin (Sports Co-ordinator) will be coordinating this within the pyramid.

The other group of schools we did was the first schools in the Wool area but again the teacher involved moved on and that stopped overnight. 

Next Wednesday we are coaching groups at the Dorset Schools Games at Bryanston – Lynn, myself and Ian Sayer doing – we are having several groups of 8/9 year olds throughout the day !  Interestingly the two organisers of this from St Aldhems Academy (ex Kemp Welch and Rossmore School) are Shelley Hamblin’s  immediate line managers.  They also have asked for St Aldhems to be mapped! 

Lynn  and I were also involved in the coaching at Port Regis recently 

Club wise Lynn and I have done coaching at Moyles Court, Port Regis and Ringwood North when we have had Dorset Schools events.  At two of these it has hardly been for the WIM children and really has been for the schools that we were at (one of John Whittingham’s moans which I would have to agree with as I don’t think we are offering our own club members any real coaching opportunities at the moment to improve their orienteering) 

I think one of our problems at the moment is that many of the coaches are the most active members in the club for organising/planning/controlling/first aid and coaching is then often not the priority – to be able to run an effective coaching programme at events it needs the coaches doing nothing at all at the event except coaching and this is seldom happening 

Unfortunately the one thing we are really lacking in WIM at the moment is a few dynamic youngsters prepared to take a lead role in coaching and who have the time to do it.  We have some active youngsters but all of them have very busy careers and their time is limited.

Dick Keighley

June 12 
Port Regis Year 7: 70+ children split into two groups, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. We used the same programme of activities which I devised for the initial session in June 2013. These are long (3 hour) sessions, with a 30 minute break mid-session. We used 3 schools SI sets (1,2 & 4, with 40 stakes & flags plus a set of cones for the Naughty numbers grid)

Programme
30 minutes - introductory activities. After a 5-10 minute introduction the group  is split in two for two initial 15 minute activities . These smaller  groups then switch activities
a) A map walk around a seciton of the school grounds, learning the map symbols and how to set a map
b) Naughty numbers - Working in pairs, with a dibber per pair. Introduction to the use of SI, plus setting and navigating on a simple 'map'

then
c) Both groups join, and the children then work in pairs running loop courses around an area of the school campus on a 1:2000 map segment extracted from the main school map.
This activity usually last 30-40 minute up to the school break

Finally after the 30 minute break
d) A Harris Relay - The children divide into groups of three. The importance of teamwork is emphasised, and the groups are given their maps and time to plan ahead before starting their course.
There are 20 controls spread around the schools grounds. The course consists of a 'Spine' of 8 controls which each member must complete, plus a further 12 controls which need only to  be visited by one member of the team. The children then meet up and finish together. Rather than disqualifying teams, penalty minutes are added to their team time at the rate of 20 minutes for a missed spine control and 10 minutes for a missed optional control.
The time taken for this activity varied this year between 28 minutes for the best group to 55 minutes for the slowest.

Coaches/Helpers involved - Dick Keighley (director/computing), Chris Turner, Diggory Turner (am), Kirsty Staunton (am and first part of the afternoon session), John Warren, Keith Henderson and (pm) Chris Branford.
Nikki Miller (the Port Regis Bursar, who organised the PR side of things also helped set out controls for the loops course, whilst Rory, the head groundsman, drove me round the estate in an all-terrain vehicle to set out the controls for the Harris Relay, and collected most of the controls in at  the end of the day. He was not best pleased when we ran out of fuel at the furthest end of the course (he had asked his staff to refuel the vehicle the previous night but they had forgotten) and we had to wait 10 minutes whilst they came out in their other vehicle to rescue us. This caused the morning session to start 15 minutes later than planned!

Last year, Port Regis made a substantial donation to WIM funds from which realistic travelling could be claimed and I assume this will the case this year. This was a successful day, and enjoyed by most of the children and we expect to repeat the exercise next year.

June 16
Debs Mays organised a session at Burgate School between 1.30 & 3.30 for Year 6 pupils from the various feeder Primary Schools for Burgate ( Breamore, Alderholt, Western Downland, Fordingbridge and a couple more I can't remember: about 80 children in all. We used Schools Set 2 + Set 4 plus a splits printer.
There were three separate 10-15 minute introductory activities (a map walk, a symbols relay and a star exercise on a netbal/tennis court), followed by a series of short cross country courses around John Warren's map of  the Burgate School campus. For this the children worked in pairs using a dibber per pair, and downloaded on the SI splits printer.

Coaches/Helpers:  Debs Mays (director),  Kirsty Staunton, John Warren, Keith Henderson, Dick Keighley

June 17
Shillingstone Brownies - 23 girls aged between 7 & 13. This took place between 6.30 & 7.30 on the playing field and churchyard of Shillingstone Parish Church and their Church Centre, (a former village school, bought by the church as a parish facility after a new school replaced it in 2012) mapped by Di Tilsley in 2005 and updated by me earlier this month. I used Schools SI Set 1 for the loops courses plus Set 4 for Naughty Number

Activities:   Naughty Numbers (on the field by the Centre) followed by loop courses around the outside of the Church Centre building, the playing field and the churchyard

Coach - Dick Keighley with assistance from my next door neighbour (Tawny Owl) and the other Brownie leaders.

June 23 & 27
St Michael's Middle School, Colehill Year 5 activity week - Keith Henderson has run this for St Michael's for a number of year's now, with various WIM helpers, and the activities have evolved over the years.
This year, there were four classes in Year 5, with two classes on the Monday (am 10.30-12.30 and pm 1.30-3.30), one class of about 20 children at a time.

The activity  programme - identical this year to the first part of the the Port Regis sessions, ie 10 minute introduction/15 minute map walk/ 15 minute Naughty numbers, followed by 45 minutes loop courses around Di Tilsley's school map.

Coaches - Keith Henderson (director), Kirsty Staunton, Dick Keighley

Also:-
We have been approached by Shelley Hamblin, the primary liaison teacher at Purbeck School, to help restart orienteering activities in their feeder primary schools.
Before the system was re-organised and the middle schools abolished, there was a regular orienteering competition between the middle schools feeding the Purbeck School, Wareham, run by Adrian Mitchell, a former club member, now Head of a Primary School in Somerset

Now, the feeder primary schools for Purbeck School have all gained Year 5 & 6 children, many schools have new buildings or extensions  and their school maps, made by Di Tilsley 10 years ago, need updating.
I have discussed with Shelley a programme for updating the maps over the next year or two, starting in September with those schools where building work has been completed and who have asked for updated maps.
Updating will be done by Di if she has the time, or Chris branford or me, depending on time.

The intention is that we will then run a course for teachers sometime in Jan/Feb 2015, possibly using Jason Falconer, that teachers will then do their own in-school orientereing activities, and there will be some form of inter-school festival/competiton held at Purbeck School in the summer term.

I've stressed to Shelley that once we've done the initial training, WIM will expect schools to run their own activities, rather than expecting us to do it all for them. There is money available for remapping and training.

Mike Kite

2012-13 On-site coaching at Loders, Salwayash, Marshwood and Thorner's schools. Maps were originally produced by Di Tilsley, updated by me. I also used ideas for school/parkland activities developed by Di e.g. loop courses.

Sept 2013 - after-school schools orienteering at Wootton Hill. 4 schools (Colfox, Salwayash, Loders and Bridport St Mary's) sent children. A come-and-try-it rather than coaching event.

March 2014 - orienteering at Sir John Colfox School, Bridport. Attended by Y7 & Y8 pupils; also by groups from St Catherine's, Powerstock and Salwayash primary schools.

May-June 2014 - coaching & courses at Stonebarrow Hill, Charmouth. 11 participants.

A typical format for a non-school venue might be

Meet & welcome followed by:
1. Intro to map - colours, symbols, scale, north lines.
2. Keeping the map orientated as you move around - demo, then have a go.
3. How to orientate the map with a compass (depending on age, ability etc).
4. Map activity on open area - jog, stop, orientate the map, show position.
5. Map walk around nearby paths, stopping to locate at path junctions, brown/green features etc.
6. Briefing on simple safety bearing if lost (e.g. walk north uphill until you meet main path).

Followed by main activity: 20 or so controls marked on map. Choice of 3 courses to follow, or run as score event (depending on groups). Session could be 1.5 to 2 hours, depending on length & level of input, and course distances.

Orienteering activities are generally seen as one-off events, supported where individual parents/teachers/youth leaders are interested. West Dorset schools tend to focus on football, rugby (secondary), netball, cricket, cross country and athletics. There seems to be little room for other sports in a crowded PE curriculum.

Parts of Wootton Hill (left) and Stonebarrow Hill, two very different West Dorset areas

   

Tamsin Horsler

Sarah has been doing some school orienteering with other year 8s. St Osmunds has had competitions against Puddletown and Dorchester Middle School not too sure who organised it though, Sarah just said DASP but I think Di was involved at some point.

For the Dorchester schools, sports seem to centre on football, rugby, netball, cross country and athletics.  These are all well supported with matches organised after school including transport to away venues. Orienteering in the Dorchester area is limited to a few sessions on the school grounds during games lessons once a year. There is no coaching as such at all.  

Di and John Tilsley

Di and John are very much involved with 3 schools in 3 areas and have long been the stalwarts of coaching in the Weymouth area. Their efforts have included mapping school grounds, coaching in schools, running the Weymouth Schools League and organising an annual primary schools score event at Nothe Fort.

More information on their coaching contribution will appear here later.