Waterford Orienteers has a small band of enthusiastic orienteers who have kept the club running through thick and thin. This season has been successful to date.

There have been 4 local events since September...at the Minaun twice, Lyranlea and Portlaw. Further events planned for Portlaw and Knockanaffrin had to be cancelled due to inclement weather.

The major focus has been to try and encourage the younger members from the Scouts and the local schools. The most recent event at the Minaun had over 90 competitors.

Members have competed at the recent Scout competition in Dundrum and the Munster Championships.

Well done to Lisa Hokasaari (W21S), Sue Pim (W55), Stephen Thorpe (M16) for coming 1st in their categories. Others who were the top Munster finishers in their age category were: Alan Pim (M60), Andrew Pim (M21S), and Andrew Cox (M35).

The real success came in the M16 where Stephen Thorpe from Newtown School was followed in by Dorian van der Braam, Aaron Bailey and Rory Grubb...all in the top 5.

The heavy mist played havoc with the inexperienced M18 competitors where there were no completed cards. One must question the sense of plunging competitors in this age category straight on to the open mountain...it was difficult enough for relatively experienced adults. Let's hope that they have not been put off by their experience. We hope to enter teams from Waterford at the Munster Schools and Irish Schools Championships in April. This is a good target for the youngsters in the club and we will be able to gauge what progress they have made by then.

Newtown School hosts the web pages for the club http://www.iol.ie/~newtownw/wato/index.htm

All results and indeed many pictures can be found therein.

The club hopes to run some training days in the near future to give the enthusiastic confidence to control and run events in a more capable fashion.

Finally, Pat O'Connor has e-mail now (just in time for the new millennium)

patoconnorwato@eircom.net

Alan Cox.