By Aysha Finlay

Ever wondered what it’s like to run around with a map in your hand, not knowing where you are? That’s orienteering, a sport that mixes problem-solving with a little bit of adventure.

Orienteering debuted at the Zespri AIMS Games last year and consists of two different events.

The sprint is an individual event, with 305 participants this year, an increase of 38 participants compared to last year.

The Rogaine, which is a team event featuring two or three students, has 126 teams competing this year. 

There are 76 different schools taking part in orienteering at AIMS in 2025.

The St Peter’s Auckland team helped explain how the sport works.

They say the goal of orienteering is to complete the course as quickly as possible by choosing the best route between checkpoints.

The challenge of figuring out where you are can be tricky, but it is also part of what makes orienteering fun.

“You’re kinda just running around holding a map, going from control (checkpoint) to control. You just start from control one and look at your map like oh, it’s over there. But you have to check that your maps are oriented correctly.”

Ryan Barnett, who is in Year 8, says: “I think the hardest part is navigating. It’s really hard once you’ve gone away from somewhere, you don’t really know where you are.”

Toby Shoolbread, who is in Year 7, says he enjoys orienteering because of the people involved.

“I love orienteering because there’s such a community behind it, and everyone’s just so into it”.

AIMS orienteering code co-ordinator Dennis de Monchy says: “I thought we made the course too tricky this year but some of these times were faster than expected, maybe we need to make the courses trickier again next year.”

Dennis also praised the skill of this year’s participants.

“There were a lot less mispunches,” he says, “they seem to have a great knowledge of orienteering and had an understanding of what work they had to do.”

Article added: Wednesday 03 September 2025