The Ramsey Academy Orienteering team are consistently successful in their sport. Recently they competed in the British Schools Championships, resulting in the Year 11 girls’ team winning silver and the whole team finishing in third place. For the past 5 years, since the team was formed, they have always been placed in this competition which includes teams from all over the country. They have travelled as far afield as Scotland to compete.

The team regularly represent the Academy in league events and travel to different regions in East Anglia to compete against other schools. As a small school, The Ramsey Academy, Halstead are competing against some much larger schools, but the students consistently get placed in their classes, gaining points which are then totalled up at the end of the orienteering season when medals and trophies are presented.

The East Anglian Schools’ Championships at Hylands Park this year, was the most successful ever for the team. Fifteen members took part and every age category won medals including gold, silver and bronze.

This shows the level of commitment given by students, not just competing, but in the training sessions available to them. They represent the local club, the Essex Stragglers, and some of them have been selected to represent the East Anglian Junior Squad.

Orienteering has grown into a very popular sport. It tests both mental and physical abilities. Competitors must navigate themselves around a course, finding electronic checkpoints along the way in the correct order. All this, of course, is done against the clock! Getting a control in the wrong order will result in the score being void. There are different colour courses depending upon the difficulty, and will cover different distances from around 1.5km to around 7.5km. Students can be running across parkland one week and forests of Thetford the next.

I am proud to have been part of this team for the past 5 years and each and every one of them is a credit to The Ramsey Academy.

Julie Edwards - Squad Leader