Yvette Baker Final 2005, at Sherwood Pines, Nottinghamshire.

Well done to all the 19 juniors who participated in the Yvette Baker Trophy on 4th December near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire. The Yvette Baker is a national junior team competition and we were running against Britain’s best! Yvette Baker was the first Great British orienteer to win a gold medal in the World Short Course orienteering competition.

There were 15 teams in the final being the winners of each of the 14 regional heats (we had tied with Berkshire Orienteers in our regional heat and we had both gone through to the final). This is the first time Happy Herts have got through to the final round, a reflection of the increasing number and quality of our juniors now competing!

It was very cold day and the terrain was forested.

Under the scoring system the 9 best scores across 8 classes (being male and female in yellow ,orange light green and green) with a maximum of 4 counting on any one course and a maximum of 3 counting on any one class. The winner scored 100 points and thereafter it was a one point reduction for each place.

Overall Happy Herts came 11th and scored a very creditable 781 points which compared to the winning score of 879 achieved by NOC ( Nottingham Orienteering Club ).

We had some very good top 10 performances through Chris Young coming 2nd and Nick Yudin coming 7th in the Boy’s Yellow and Rebecca Harding coming 8th in the girl’s Light Green. The other team members were Tim Street, Bryony Harding, Laura Parkes, Adam Bennet, John Street, Shayli Patel, Thomas Lazarus, Graham Parkes, Richard Cooke, Michael Young, Tom Yudin, Shanil Hansjee, Robert Young, Kate Howlett and Becky Young.

Our enthusiasm was excellent but was not quite enough to conquer the day. However the overall performance augurs extremely well for future years.

Finally we should like to thank Máire for her all her help and encouragement both in the heats and in the final.

Michael and Chris Young