When you participate in an orienteering event, you are probably focusing on the terrain, on getting to the start on time, maybe keeping your excitement under control, or making sure you have your whistle. It’s a complicated business, and it can be hard to get all these pieces lined up. What you perhaps don’t see in this scene is all the pieces that had to come together to make your participation in this event safe and enjoyable. That is the responsibility of the organizers (aka officials) – volunteers who have made the effort to learn how to organize and run a good quality orienteering event.

Clubs rely on their pool of Orienteering Canada-certified officials to keep the competition and training programs running all year, every year, and that pool needs to be constantly refreshed. People move, retire, have families, get burned out – there is steady attrition. If we want to keep our favourite sport alive and well, we will always need to renew and expand our team of orienteering officials at all levels of certification. It is also important to note that the liability insurance coverage attached to every orienteering event requires that the organizers be appropriately certified officials.

To recognize those volunteers who have recently joined the O officials team, we have listed below all the orienteering officials in BC who completed their certification (O100, O200 and the various O300 specializations) in 2019-20. Apologies, if we have missed anyone who became qualified in 2019 or 2020; just let us know and we’ll correct this list.

Note that you don’t have to be an elite athlete to be a good O100 official; just study the manual, take a simple exam and demonstrate that you can plan acceptable O courses. It’s a great way to give back to the club that has been providing you with all those ‘fun and games’ outdoors! Your club president can provide more details, or contact Marg Ellis (marga.ellis at gmail.com) directly.

GVOC officials qualified 2019/2020		Level
Karamycheva	Kate	O 100
Ball	Chris	O100
Lee	Gabbie	O100
Lee	Aaron	O100
Leighton	Ian	O100
MacLeod	Meghan	O100
Siemens	Trevor	O100
Collings	Ian	O100
Mingo	Laurent	O200
Woods	Adam	O200
Rennie	Graeme	O300 CP(T)
Rennie	Robyn	O300 CP & O300 ED
Woods	Stan	O300 CP

SAGE officials qualified 2019/2020
Matrosov	Kevin	O100

KOC officials qualified 2019/2020
Charles	Eileen	O300 CP
Chatwin	John	O300 ED & O300 CP(T)
Heilman	Wakana	O300 CP

VICO officials qualified 2019/2020
Polyakov	Andrey	O100

Note: this is not a complete list of the certified officials in each club; clubs have many previously certified volunteers at every level.