Day 5

Australian School Relay Champs today at Wattle Gully. Each state team is required to nominate one official relay team in each age group. With 8 girls in the junior division, it meant 2.5 teams for ACT. Ella joined Aoife and Katherine in the unofficial ACT team while Katy joined Mira and a NSW girl to form a composite team. The ACT team members and team officials showed their team spirit - identical braids with ribbons, painted nails and face paint. Plus there were lots of younger (and older) supporters to cheer them on!

Excitingly the ACT junior girls official team was the 1st Australian team (2nd outright behind NZ) and Ella's team came 5th outright and 3rd Australian team however as being unofficial, they missed out on being on the podium. Katy's team came 11th. 

ACT had great success in the relay's with the Senior girls placing 2nd Australian team (5th outright) and the Junior boys came 3rd Australian team (6th outright). Another highlight was that no-one from ACT mispunched joining only 2 other states to do so.

The relays concluded the School Championships. New Zealand dominated the competition and convincingly won the Southern Cross Junior Challenge. ACT placed 2nd behind the NSW in the Australian teams competition.

The route from the graveyard to the first control was a memorable one as the competitors ran through one of five tunnel beneath the train tracks.

 

As for the non orienteering competition, the kids had fun challenges to do - making an O TicTok; taking a team photo with an O celebrity;  the youngest junior girl had to chug a bottle of mineral water; the youngest boy team member had to eat a pepper steak pie; fit as many team members onto a pink tyre; find the weirdest antique just to name a few. Sounds like they had a great time doing this!