Potteries Orienteering Club

The course name in the first column is a link to the full results for that course.

course		winner	club		class	time
1	G5	Ellie Bales	Ind		G5	10:54		(split times)
2	B5	Ewan Lloyd	StA		B5	10:20		(split times)
3	G6	Sophie Oliver	KH8P		G6	15:46		(split times)
4	B6	Jamie Nicholson	KH8P		B6	10:31		(split times)
5	G7	Heather Craig	WRHS		G7	16:50		(split times)
6	B7	Harrison McCartney	KH8S		B7	15:10		(split times)
7	G9	Julie Emmerson	KSSC		G9	23:01		(split times)
8	B9	Hamish Rogers	KSSC		B9	26:39		(split times)
9	G11	Emma Ketley	KH8S		G11	29:18		(split times)
10	B11	Matthew Elkington	KSSC		B11	34:16		(split times)

Primary School Trophy
	School	points
1	King Henry VIII Preparatory School	7
2	Oakridge Primary School, Stafford	8
3	St Andrews Primary School, Weston	22
Middle School Trophy
	School	points
1	Christchurch Middle School, Stone	17
Secondary School Trophy
	School	points
1	Kenilworth School & Sports College	9
2	King Henry VIII Senior School	13
3	Walton High School	29

On Saturday morning our journey to Park Hall was in sunshine – we hoped that the Met Office forecast was right: no rain until the afternoon… Unfortunately it looked like Michael Fish had done the weather report! By the middle of the morning it was raining – heavily, and then just a bit more.

Hoping the weather wasn’t going to put a dampener (ha ha) on proceedings all of our teams valiantly carried on setting up their areas and then the children started arriving. The event got under way on schedule – everyone seemed happy, despite the weather, and it makes it all worthwhile when happy, smiling (but exhausted) children come through Finish having tried their hardest out on Course.

BIG THANK YOU’S to all of our volunteers who did a sterling job on the day – we hoped we’d chosen the right people for the different jobs and it would appear from what was achieved on the day, and from the emails we have received since the event, that we did.

Well done to John Heaton and his Car Parking team – you have been especially mentioned in an email for looking after the Cake Stall people very well! Brenda commanded the Start efficiently and everybody got their allocated Start Time without any hiccups (even though Andy had trouble reading the Start Times paper after about an hour!) Neil valiantly encouraged all of the competitors up to Finish from the last Control with Adrian and Gordon directing to Download. The two Johns in charge of Download handled it all very calmly in their ‘chill-out’ zone, but then they weren’t the ones getting wet!

Thanks must go to Henry for providing everybody with challenging courses and also to his Team out on Course who looked out for each competitor (especially those who were taking a bit too long…)

When we sent out our email asking for Helpers we were really pleased by the response we got, especially from some of our new members who didn’t really know what they were letting themselves in for – I think they all enjoyed themselves and we know that they did a great job.

Finally, we hope that everybody had a good day – we did when we sat down later that afternoon and looked back to what seemed a very daunting task three months ago. Thank you to all School staff for bringing and cajoling children into taking part – without you doing this there wouldn’t be a competition, and thank you to the 200 children who took part – well done!

I’d also like to pass on thanks from Jill Emmerson who ran the Cake Stall raising money for the Kenilworth Girls Team who are off to Italy for the World Schools Orienteering Championships – they raised £80 on the day.

At the end of the presentations it was brought to our attention that we had counted the top 4 scores for the Secondary School Shield and not the top 6 as we should have done – on recalculating this the scores were King Henry VIII 13, Kenilworth 9, still the winners.

Gareth and Sally Lloyd