ShUOC - The Early Years
Doug Kedzierski was a biology student living at Sorby Hall who had been a fresher at Sheffield University in 1967. He had been orienteering from its start in Southern England and became a member of Southern Navigators shortly after it was formed in 1965. In early 1968 there were still no orienteering clubs in Yorkshire or even a Regional Association and orienteers either joined neighbouring clubs, ran as members of schools or colleges, or described themselves at events as Independents.
Although foot and mouth had curtailed orienteering from December 1967 to March 1968, with help from Gerry Charnley and David Horsfall and having attended the 2nd JK at Haslemere, Doug formed a club in early June 1968, a week before the 3rd British Championships, and began to publicise it locally. Gerry was the secretary of NWOA and one of the first orienteers in England, and David was a member of Sheffield University staff who was secretary of the Athletics Council as well as the university’s BUSF/UAU representative The next members were Mike Hayes, a friend of Doug’s who was a lecturer at the university in Business Studies and a keen runner, and David himself.
Because many clubs at the time had an alliterative name, the new club was called Sheffield Shifters and was reported as such in the first edition of the BOF news sheet ‘Stop Press’ later that month. In the December 1968 edition of The Orienteer, it was listed as an Open club. This was to attract other local orienteers but in addition, in order to be eligible for funding from the university Athletics Council, any university sports club had to have been up and running for a year.
In the next few years the region and the clubs we know today were formed as follows: YHOA (October 1968), EBOR (April 1969), AIRE (May 1969), EYOC, now HALO (October 1969), SYO (June 1972), EPOC (November 1976) and later CLARO (October 1990).
Sheffield Shifters’ initial event for those recruited was in Wharncliffe Woods on a rainy Sunday in the 1968 Autumn term when Doug ran from Sorby Hall in the morning with the controls in a rucksack, put them out, then ran back to Sorby for lunch. The maps were black and white copies of the OS 1:25,000 with the streams squiggled on in blue to differentiate them from other lines. He recalls that he got a lift in the afternoon from someone and that there were a couple of issues with control settings. But he had done the whole thing himself as there was nobody else, there was definitely some interest, and the club progressed from there.
During that first term there were up to 10 regular university members of whom a number were also athletes or cross-country runners. This influx continued and early members included Malcolm Thomas who was the 1972 English National cross-country champion and Dave Gillanders who won the 1973 BUSF 3000m Steeplechase. v
Sheffield Shifters training usually occurred at Rivelin, Ecclesall Woods and Wharncliffe and was mainly at weekends. On Sundays, members would be driven to events in the Students Union Land Rover by Mike Pearson and would often “set off with only a few hours sleep after a heavy night, to distant locations”. However an early success was at a nearby C4-type event on the BOF fixtures list but organised by an individual, Dick Mackay (later EPOC) at Bretton Park, Wakefield on 10/11/68 where Doug himself won Course A.
The club was enterprising enough to agree to hold a C3-type National Badge event on 3/3/69 but this date was actually passed to new club DVO to stage their first event at Shining Cliff which was later moved to 6/4/69. The Shifters tried again to hold a National Event on 5/10/69 in “the Sheffield area” but once again it was cancelled and this time the date passed to another new club, EBOR.
In 1969 the club travelled further afield and at the 3rd JK Individual at Kielder, Shifters’ R.Mussell, Doug and R.Blackwell came 8th, 16th and 20th in Intermediate Men. At the Relays at Kielder (transferred from Slaley 36 hours earlier because of thick frozen snow), the second team came 10th in the C Class and was part of the subset of results reported in The Orienteer. The first team retired in the A Class having been an hour behind the 1st leg leader. The next trip was to the 1st BUSF Championships at Grizedale on 20/4/69 which was an Individual race only and part of an MDOC National Badge event. Because the courses were set to championship standard and many students were orienteering for the first time, only 65 of the 100 men finished and only 2 women out of 12. Although the 6 Sheffield runners were wearing their new kit of pale blue o-tops and dark blue bottoms, no top 3 placing came thieir way.
In the Autumn of 1969 the club changed its name to Sheffield University OC but the SUOC abbreviation which was used, conflicted at times with that of recently formed Southampton University OC, and it wasn’t until July 1971 that in an official list of club names printed in The Orienteer that the club became known as SHUOC. The last reported reference to the Sheffield Shifters was in June 1985’s Compass Sport when SHUOC had come from behind to beat SYO by 10 seconds in the British Relays at Clipstone.
Because of David Horsfall’s links with BUSF, SUOC agreed to stage the 1970 university championships. There were still no Relays and the Individual was held at Rivelin on 9/5/70. David was the organiser and Planner Mike Hayes produced a 3-colour map (Black, Blue, Brown) at 1:10560. Geoff Peck (EUOC) won the Men’s but there was some controversy. A control on the Men’s course which was on a thicket on an ‘island’ in marshy ground was removed during the event. Because Army Cadets were taking split times at various controls, in order to get a winner it was decided to remove the split for everybody, whether affected or not, and as is still the case now, some thought that the course should have been voided.
1971 brought a 2nd place for Rosemary Watkins in the BUSF Women’s Individual at Darshelloch & Touch organised by Stirling University and in the absence of a Relay, SUOC Women (Rosemary, Annie Branson and Diane Raggett) were 3rd in the team competition based on each club’s best 3 times. Also this year, Pete Nelson (Junior Men) and Mike Pearson (Senior Men) were awarded Championship Badges, and Cherry Simpson was 3rd in Intermediate Women at the JK at Leith Hill.
Doug Kedzierski graduated in 1971 and received university colours for the work he had done in setting up what was to become SHUOC. He had done teaching practice at King Edward VII school in Sheffield and taught chemistry under Clive Allen (co-founder of SYO and later BOF Chairman), and took Clive to his first event, a Bradford University/AIRE National Badge at Wharncliffe on 14/2/71. He moved to Australia to teach in late 1971, becoming Doug Kennedy, and returned to the UK in the 1990’s rejoining SN in 1995. He became BOF’s Environmental Officer in 2001. Mike Hayes and David Horsfall later joined SYO.
Unfortunately he missed SHUOC’s greatest success so far which was at the 1st BUSF Relays in 1972 organised by Cardiff, where SHUOC’s team of Rosemary Watkins, Annie Branson and Diane Raggett won the Women’s race. Nottingham had led after the first leg, favourites Edinburgh after the second, and Diane “surprising everyone, including herself” came home to beat Edinburgh by 4 minutes. The team received their medals at the Cardiff Union from David Horsfall as BUSF representative, ineligible to run in the Championships himself.
This was followed by a well deserved 3rd place in the 1st British Relay Championships at Newcastleton Forest on 21/5/72, just inside the Scottish border, by the SHUOC Men’s team of Mike Hayes, Dave Gillanders and Mike Pearson. They followed winners INT and EUOC but pushed a very strong Manchester University team into 4th place by 5 minutes.
Text and content attibuted to Ray Waight.