Starting a school team or club

Schools are encouraged to organize their own teams and clubs, and to compete at local events open to the public, hosted by the New England Orienteering Club and Cambridge Sports Union. 

We recommend the Orienteering Coach's Handbook from Cascade Orienteering Club. Our staff can advise coaches on creating a series of training exercises and developing your team. We will For example, Navigation Games partners with Cambridge Public Schools to support competitive teams at the middle and high school level.

We are available to provide a weekly practice in the woods and welcome any school team or club to participate. 

We hope in the future to organize middle and high school competitive leagues in the northeast USA, based on the model of the Washington Interscholastic Orienteering League. Please contact us if you are interested in having your school participate.

Examples:

• Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School - we started the orienteering team in 2016; it has an inclusive and translation-to-life focus, attracting scholars who would not otherwise participate in sports. The team has medaled at the national interscholastic orienteering championships hosted by Orienteering USA.

• Cambridge middle schools - each fall and spring, orienteering is offered as an after-school sport with culminating races in the spring (relay) and fall (Vampire-O).

A middle or high school team can practice on school grounds, and nearby parks, and compete at local orienteering club events. Some schools send teams to compete at regional and national championships.

Links:

• Orienteering Coach's Handbook (Cascade Orienteering Club)

• Cambridge high school orienteering team website

• NJROTC Orienteering Training Manual (NJROTC Area Six Leadership Academy)

• QOC Library (Quantico Orienteering Club - available for QOC members to check out for up to 3 months)

• Orienteering Training (Orienteering USA)

• Navigation Games middle school orienteering coaching manual (Fall 2024)  *** needs link ***

Activities

Here's a sampling of several activities we do with our school teams and programs. These activities are designed to teach skills in map reading, route planning, and spatial awareness, in addition to developing physical fitness. For more schoolyard orienteering activities, or questions about how to run a program, please contact us!

Schoolground Course

Even schoolgrounds in densely populated areas offer up plenty of fun orienteering opportunities! Set a regular point-to-point course, have your students run loops in different orders, or even have a relay competition, all using a map of your school. This type of activity best develops the ability to navigate while moving and learning how to plan ahead.

A point-to-point course at Cambridge Street Upper School.

Memory-O

While the point of orienteering is learning how to navigate using a map, there is a lot of benefit to memorizing the map as well. This type of activity encourages students to visualize the terrain around them and learn to focus only on the features most important to navigation while ignoring extraneous details.

Map segments attached to each even-numbered checkpoint

Compass Spider

This exercise is designed to teach skills in finding diretion. Students can do this in the woods or a park, or even on an empety soccer field. The "map" contains no details, just lines and locations of the target checkpoints. At each numbered control there should be a flag or marker to help students identify if they have arrived at the correct point. Students start from the middle, and use the compass to turn their map until it is facing the correct direciton (north). Once the map is lined up, all of the checkpoints on the map should match up with the checkpoints scattered throughout the area. They can also practice this without the compass, and try to orient the map only be matching up the surrounding checkpoints. These exercises help develop spatial awareness, and encourage students to notice the spatial relationships between objects.

Example compass spider

For additional activities, check out our activities page!

About the Cambridge School orienteering teams

Navigation Games provides support for middle school teams in Cambridge, MA. Practices are once a week after school for 4-6 weeks. In the spring the teams gather for final relay races in our main park. In the fall, teams participate in an after-dark team game called Vampire-O.

Orienteering at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School (CRLS) in Cambridge, MA is relatively new, but in the few years the high school has been involved with orienteering, CRLS has made a splash in the national competitive scene, and is well established with the local orienteering community. In the spring of 2018, CRLS won the Junior National Championships in the Varsity category, and placed third in the JV category, and second for Intermediate.

The season is split between the spring and fall, where the spring focuses more on competition while the fall season has a greater emphasis on learning navigation skills. That said, both seasons are open to students of all ability levels, even those who have never picked up a map or run through the woods before!

The team typically meets 3-5 times a week. At least one of those days we will take a bus to the forest, and another day will be attending a public event put on by one of the local orienteering clubs. The other practices take place in local parks or on the streets throughout Cambridge.

If you would like to know more about the CRLS orienteering team, or get advice for starting your own team, we can put you in touch with Coach David Landrigan - just send us an email.