HIGHLAND FLING - ORIENTEERING - New Zealand girls a hit with Swedish boys

STEVE ARMON
The friendship relay is always the final competition event at the World Schools' Orienteering Championship. It provides a fitting finale for the championship, which aims to promote international friendship through sport.
In the relay, teams of three are put together by the organisers, mixing boys and girls from different countries. The teams have an hour to find one another, plan who will punch which controls so that they collect them all, and plan how they will meet. All three have to come together at three points on the course, and from the final meeting point run hand in hand to the finish.
The friendship relay was an outstanding success, not least for Mark Irwin, whose team finished fourth in the coaches' race, executing a cunning plan.
The closing ceremony was a colourful pageant and worked brilliantly, starting with a procession of competitors by country, and ending with lowering the flag of Scotland and raising that of the next hosts, Spain.
Entertainment was provided by a samba band and dance group which soon had the kids up copying the moves. Others formed a giant conga which weaved its way around the open grass amphitheatre in front of the Scottish Parliament.
When it ended, the New Zealanders and the English came back together for prizes and presents and trading of tops. The ten Havelock girls are now all proud owners of Ulverston Victoria School orienteering tops. Some of the girls have been so successful at fraternising with the other teams that the Ulverston top forms just a part of their international collection.
Fraternising also paid off when it came to popularity. The Swedish boys started posting their lists in the lifts of the 10 hottest chicks in the hostel. One of the Havelock girls appeared at number one, another at five, and at seven: "the rest of the New Zealand girls".
The Spanish boys wouldn't be outdone, so their list appeared, headed by an Israeli girl as hottest of them all. Another Israeli had written: "Thank God we won something".
Final act of the champs is always a dance night for competitors, which the Scots turned into a ceilidh (rhymes with Hayley) taking a huge hall full of teenagers through Scottish country dances. Havelock High were still doing them in the departure lounge of Edinburgh airport the following day.
The friendships started will be maintained, and Ulverston and Havelock look forward to Easter 2010 when Clare Evans will bring her English girls to New Zealand to compete, to see the country and to pick up the friendships these girls have made.
* HNHS sports co-ordinator Steve Armon and the pupils are on a two-week trip for the Secondary Schools' World Orienteering Championship in Edinburgh. This was his final contribution.