John died at his Ferndown nursing home on March 9th 2025 aged 88.
John will be known to the longer standing members of SOC as a great friend to our club.
He controlled the November Classic on a number of occasions. 
I will particularly miss our long phone conversations, especially in the early days of the OCAD mapping software, and we would always finish with putting the orienteering world to rights!
Details of his funeral have now been circulated and are as follows:

It will be at 1pm on Tuesday 1st April at New Forest Crematorium, Stem Lane, New Milton
BH25 5FH. This will be followed by a gathering and afternoon tea buffet at Burley Manor, Ringwood Rd, Burley, Ringwood BH24 4BS. 
Dress code: we know that John loved orienteering and so if O-club members would like to wear their club kit, you'd be welcome to do so. 
A live-stream will be available if anyone can't make it and wants to watch the service remotely. If you are able to attend or would like a link to the live stream please e-mail eamondoc [at] aol.com (eamondoc[at]aol[dot]com) A link will be confirmed shortly. 
Family flowers only preferred. Should anyone wish to donate to charities that John supported we'll be collecting for RNLI and Parkinson's UK"

The final league tables are attached and the list of prize winners. Congratulations to SOC members Andy Snell 3rd in the open class, and Paul Thwaites 2nd in the age graded class.

Some statistical comments from James Crickmore (WSX).

Attendance Stats

• 667 attendances (including organisers).
• 107 people from 12 different clubs, plus independents, attended at least 2 events.
• 2 people attended all 15 events: Bohdan Rainczuk (SARUM) and Charlotte Thornton (SARUM).
• 18 people attended 10 or more events.

Other Stats

• There were 6 different open event winners, and 8 different age graded event winners.
• 36 runs collected bonus points for completing a course in under 59 minutes.
• 5 people perfected their sprint finish, with a time of exactly 60:00 and no penalty.
• 175 runs (30%) were late back, losing a total of 7588 points (3.8% of points collected).
• Coldharbour caught out the most people with 86% of competitors late back!

SOC successfully put on 4 events in the league and for the second year running hosted the finals night, this time in Lymington.
Many thanks to all the SOC volunteers that helped make all 4 of our events happen 

The finals were held from the Mayflower pub in Lymington and thanks for their hospitality. They now have a greater understanding about orienteering!

 Thanks to everyone for coming to the event and making it a worthy final for this winter's WRNL. It was great to be able to use a brand new map. Well done to all the winners and to Jo for orchestrating the priegiving. However, the event would not have happened without a lot of hard work by volunteers. Many thanks to Mark Light who helped me with the map. I think 5m contours was the correct decision. Jack Benham (BML) and I worked on getting a much lighter green settlement colour, and by the favourable comments on legibility I think we have now found a standard for the night league maps. Thanks to all the volunteers who helped in getting all the controls out there and back in again, Steve, Mark, Kevin, Tim, Claire and Paul. A couple of apologies on the control placement, I should have mentioned in the start lane about the one on the bin as there was nowhere at the end of the hedge to place a stake in concrete! Also the locked gate at the end of the footpath, which had never been locked on any of my survey visits. The closed bridge over the stream was an irritation, as it had only appeared sometine in the last week! One final thing the pub tells me that 2 meals served remain not paid for! - one venison bourguignon and one beef burger. Whoever it is please can they phone the pub and pay for it! 
Colin Hicks