The club took a new approach to organising the event fixture for 2025. For the first time we sent out a survey of members asking about the shape of the fixture and gauging the extent of volunteer support. Major findings from the survey were:
- – Half of members expressed a desire for some regularity in the fixture, with half wanting events every second week or every week.
- – The other half supported keeping events on weekends when there was no other bush event within reasonable distance of Bendigo.
- – I counted about 16 plausible offers to organise an event in 2025. This is approximately one event every two weeks.
In an ideal world we would run an event every second week and avoid conflicts with other events on the same weekend. We don’t live in an ideal world. Other orienteering clubs don’t organise their fixture on a regular cycle, preferring to clump events in Spring and Autumn and avoid winter. This year the Bendigo fixture had a plethora of events in winter and some multi week gaps in Autumn and Spring. Given the desire from members for a reasonably regular fixture, it is clear that some Bendigo Saturday events will share the weekend with other bush navigation events. Which events to double up on? I counted the attendance of Bendigo members at various bush events in 2024. A simple summary is-
- – Bendigo Bush 30 members
- – State events in Central Victoria 20 members
- – Ballarat local events and state events 10 members
- – Rogaines in Central Victoria 5 members
These numbers indicate priority should go to orienteering events between Bendigo and Daylesford.
Building the fixture became a process of compromising between many objectives:
- – Having a regular pattern of local Bendigo events without gaps longer than 1 empty Saturday.
- – Trying to avoid events on the same weekend as State bush events in central Victoria (and to a lesser extent Ballarat events and rogaines).
- – Keeping the event load low before and immediately after the Easter orienteering carnival based at Inglewood.
- – Matching the event load with the available volunteers and the map and date preferences of those volunteers.
- – Using viable maps that were not used in 2024.
The draft fixture is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zpyscBfQyiYUZktWUTUJm1KXlibf0h00-P9x_daR-w4/edit?usp=sharing
I have placed volunteer names against maps as my best attempt to match with preferences expressed in the survey. If these do not suit, please comment on the fixture page or send an email to the address below alternate suggestions. There are some spare slots as not every survey response had a name attached. Feel free to indicate an interest in running one of these events.
The plan is to finalise the fixture mid October and start applying for permits. I know this seems early, but the permit process can be slow and nothing much happens after mid-December in the permit office.
Neil
Photo: Don Cherry
