CompassSport Trophy Final 2025South Gare, 14 September

ESOC came 3rd in the CompassSport Trophy Final! This year it was in the NE of England, not too far to travel, organised by Cleveland Orienteering Klub.

ESOC qualified for the 2025 CompassSport Trophy Final in February (see this news item). The Final this year was just west of Redcar, on the North Yorkshire coast. There were 1,000 competitors at the event, with many club tents and flags in the Finish Arena, so there was a great atmosphere. 34 ESOC members competed, and most travelled to the event on a coach organised by the club as a day trip.
South Gare is reclaimed land created in the 19th Century using slag from the nearby blast furnaces and now has extensive sand dunes, making it a very technical area. A network of large and small paths offered the fastest routes, but it was often difficult to work out which path was which.
The Start was a short walk away through the dunes, and the courses snaked around the area. Everyone agreed that the hardest part was the run-in, 260m of soft sand.
The weather forecast had been quite pessimistic, but luckily it stayed dry until later in the afternoon.

Helena Nolan, ESOC Club Captain, commented:
“It was a great turnout from ESOC at the CompassSport Trophy Final. Perfect running conditions, very tricky courses in the sand dunes, but lots of encouragement from teammates at the finish. Well done to everyone!
Everything went smoothly except for someone, we'll not mention names, turning up at the wrong park and ride, and me turning up at the start without my dibber!
I hope that everyone enjoyed themselves; thanks for being part of the team.”

ESOC were competing in the CompassSport Trophy (the competition for small clubs – note that this is determined by the number of British Orienteering members) against 21 other clubs. The scoring is complicated – for a full explanation see the CompassSport Cup Rules.

ESOC came 3rd, with a score of 1190, just 2 points behind Borderliners. Our counting scorers were:

course 2: Short Brown – Luigi Lerose (82)
course 3: Women Open – Helen Bridle (99), Rachel Brown (98)
course 5: Green (Women) – Fran Daley (90), Katherine Kirk (88)
course 6: Green (Men) – Richard Oxlade (92), Kevin Harding (85)
course 7: Veterans – Crawford Lindsay (97), Sally Lindsay (93)
course 8A: Junior Men – Calum Robertson (92)
course 8B: Junior Women – Megan Brown (90)
course 9B: Orange (Women) – Emma Daley (100)
course 10: Superveterans – Janice Nisbet (84)

In the Trophy competition, a club’s best 13 results count. Other ESOC members who were in the top half of the results for their course were:

course 3: Women Open ( 79 competitors) – Sarah McAdam 27th, Heidi Ross 34th
course 5: Green (Women) (125) – Helena Nolan 33rd
course 6 : Green (Men) (118) – Keith Brown 41st
course 7: Veterans (133) – Peter Halling 24th, Alison Harding 35th

Full results, Routegadget, and further details about the event, including comments from officials and links to photos, are available on the CompassSport Cup Final page of the CLOK website. The results include the team scores for both Cup and Trophy. South Yorkshire Orienteers won the Cup competition, and Interløpers won the Trophy competition.

There's also a report on the Scottish Orienteering website.

On Saturday 13 September, the day before the CompassSport Cup & Trophy Final, there was a Middle Distance urban race at Stockton Riverside, the area where the JK Sprint should have been in 2020. The event parking was at Durham University Queen’s Campus sports centre, and the competition area was mostly south of the River Tees, in a landscaped business park plus university buildings and grounds. Canals, bridges, uncrossable walls and steps added to the route choice and the courses kept everyone thinking all the way round.
Full results, Routegadget and more details about the event are available on the Stockton Riverside page of the CLOK website.

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