Honours and Awards for 2025

David Stocks won the Wehner Cup for ACT orienteer of the year.

The top ten points placings for 2025 were:

Stephen Goggs

Since 2017 Stephen has been the OACT Sporting Schools coordinator, administering and delivering programs to primary and secondary school students across Canberra and the nearby NSW region.

The program has been rolled out in one form or another to over 70 primary schools and 20 high schools and colleges, many of them happy repeat customers. Stephen makes proactive contact with school sports teachers throughout the ACT reminding them of the opportunities available to seek funding for orienteering coaching. When grants are announced he follows up with teachers who have logged an expression of interest in applying their funds to orienteering in order to identify suitable dates and times to deliver the coaching program. Stephen has developed a passion for delivering the coaching himself on many occasions, but he has also developed a cohort of other retirees and, increasingly, university student coaches to assist with the task, especially when schools book in up to eight classes per day for each of the four days of a typical program.

Stephen has also been OACT’s representative on a number of OA-led national working parties and has contributed heavily to the development of a successful and respected Coaching Curriculum for orienteering and a Program Delivery Guide aligned to the learning outcomes of the National Education Framework, initially for Years 3 to 6 and morer ecently extended to Years 7 and 8. The national delivery guide includes many activities refined by OACT coaches and one devised by Stephen himself as a suitable introductory activity for new starters of all ages.

It is testament to Stephen’s ongoing commitment to the work that our sport and our association have developed a strong reputation for providing students of all ages with valuable and enjoyable exposure to a sport that engages body and brain in a fun and non-competitive way.

A list of prior recipients can be found here.

Parawanga Orienteers: the organising team for the 2025 ACT Sprint Championships: Course setter (Bryant Allen), the controller (Phil Walker), the day organisers (Nat Smith & Andy Hogg) and Jill Walker (Liaison)

The Sprint Championships were held at the Australian National Botanic Gardens (ANBG) on Sunday 16th March.

Engagement with the ANBG’s management was initiated by the then OACT President, Susanne Harrysson, in mid-2024 and continued throughout that year and into 2025. The ANBG’s management set out clear guidelines for areas that could be used with strict conditions that no participants should enter the garden beds. This was entirely understandable given that the ANBG has the world’s most comprehensive display of living Australian native plants.
Access to the ANBG for the event and setup was constrained with set times to not interfere with the maintenance activities or peak times for visitors to the Gardens. This required tight planning by the course setter (Bryant Allen), the controller (Phil Walker) the day organisers (Nat Smith & Andy Hogg) and Jill Walker who liaised with the ANBG’s rangers and volunteer staff.

Forever in the minds of the event organisers was the risk of reputational damage if even one participant was seen running across a garden bed. To mitigate the risk the event organisers provided numerous briefings on the need stay out of out of bounds areas, and placed marshals at key points to monitor the runners. Pleasingly there were no reported cases of participants entering the out of bounds areas.

A lot of maintenance work goes on every week at the ANBG, with tracks being repaired, trimming of plants, clearing fallen trees after high winds and garden beds being replanted. Consequently, tracks were closed off or opened to the public at short notice necessitating changes to the map in the fortnight before the event with purple hatching added or removed. Paul de Jongh was called upon in the week before the event to do map changes as areas were closed off as out-of-bounds, and other areas open to access.

The event attracted 205 entries, with dozens travelling from interstate to experience a unique orienteering experience at an iconic location of national significance. The event was an outstanding success thanks to the effort of the organising team to obtain access to the ANBG, run the event in the narrow time period allocated to OACT by the ANBG, and the thorough preparations in the months leading up to the event and the ongoing liaison with ANBG staff in the week before and on the day of the event.

A list of prior recipients can be found here.

Susanne Harrysson

As the OACT President from April 2022 to April 2025 Susanne was prominent in promoting orienteering and strengthening OACT’s governance. This was at a time when all community sports were needing to rebuild their membership and participation base after the COVID years, and at time when the Australia Sports Commission, Orienteering Australia and State Governments were raising the standards on what was required from sporting organisations to meet best practice for governance. As a result of Susanne’s leadership, OACT achieved the higher governance standards and, although it took longer than expected, OACT’s membership and participation numbers have increased getting closer to pre-COVID levels.

Susanne has been, and still is, the driving force behind the very successful Learn-to-Orienteering (L2O) programs. She has worked with Orienteering Australia to shape the L2O syllabus and has been the co-ordinator for running the L2O programs for OACT since inception. The value of the L2O program can be seen in the number of newcomers to the sport for both adults and juniors.

Susanne has also been the driving force behind the resurgence in the SC-ORE series of orienteering for the younger school students. She manages the series, liaises with schools for access to venues and promotes the sport. This is no simple task, having become more difficult to engage with schools post COVID, with many schools reluctant to have events or promote internally. Nevertheless, the Spring 2025 SC-ORE series was the best attended series since before COVID.

When not managing the L2O and SC-ORE programs, Susanne co-ordinates the Sprint series, once again liaising with schools for access to venues on Sunday mornings and arranging for course setters, with Susanne invariably the person on the computer/rego desk. When time permits she also helps out with pre-event coaching.

Susanne doesn’t seek recognition or self-promotion. She just gets on and does what is required, which means much of what she does to promote the sport, run series of events and coaching goes unnoticed for most participants.

It is of no surprise, given this impressive list of achievements, that Susanne was nominated for this award by at least five separate OACT members. Every one of these spoke very highly of the enormous commitment and breadth of contributions made by her to OACT in the promotion of orienteering, and the enhancement of its reach across the ACT.

Well done, Susanne. You are a deserving winner of the award and OACT thanks you for all that you have achieved.

A list of prior recipients can be found here. 

Valerie Barker

In addition to the above Orienteering ACT awards, Valerie Barker was presented with an Australian Schools Orienteering Championships Service Award.

While the formal criteria for this award recognise ten years of dedicated service, Valerie’s contribution to orienteering stretches for more than two decades. She has been a constant and trusted presence in our volunteer community, particularly in junior development and as a cornerstone of Australia’s high-performance pathway. Valerie has served as Manager of the Australian Junior World Orienteering Championships team on multiple occasions, providing stability, care and guidance that have helped our young athletes perform with confidence on the world stage. She has also played a key role in managing Australian junior teams during international competitions and exchanges with New Zealand, helping to grow skills, friendships and experience for our youngest competitors. Her commitment to juniors continues today through her ongoing mentoring roles.