Orienteering Australia congratulates the winners of this year’s major awards.

Awards in Recognition of Contribution and Service

Nick Dent and Hilary Wood (pictured receiving their trophy at Easter) were joint recipients of the 2009 Silva Award for Services to Orienteering.

Nick and Hilary have had a sustained involvement in orienteering in NSW since the mid 1980s including mapping, event organisation, course planning and controlling, and management of the NSW Schools team. The last five years has seen Nick and Hilary move into national roles. They were initially appointed as co- managers of the JWOC teams in 2006 and 2007 and then as coach and manager in 2008 and 2009. Nick is orienteering Event Director for the 2009 World Masters Games and Hilary has taken on an area management of events role. In 2008 Nick accepted a position on the OANSW Board as Planning Director.

Ron Pallas was awarded the inaugural David Hogg Medal for Services to Event Management for his leadership role as Event Director and Organiser of the JWOC 2007 and Easter 2008 carnivals in Dubbo, NSW. JWOC 2007 was arguably the largest international orienteering event run in Australia since the WOC in 1985.  While many orienteers both from NSW and other States were involved, it was Ron’s leadership role which provided a central focus and impetus for the planning and event management.

Unfortunately no nominations were received for the Services to Coaching award.

Performance Awards

As reported previously on this website and in the Australian Orienteer magazine, Adrian Jackson was voted the 2008 Athlete of the Year for the most outstanding performance in elite orienteering competition during the year and Alex Tarr won the 2008 Silva Medal for orienteer of the year.