A Chance to Train and Teach Orienteering in Sweden for a Year
- Barb Bryant
- 24 hours ago
- 4 min read
By Keegan Harkavy
In sixth grade, I had a life-changing experience. For the first time in my life, I held a map and was told to find my way. This was the first moment that I ever orienteered. Over the next 6 years, orienteering would completely change my life. It would take me to new places, from Arizona to Hungary, from California to Denmark. It would introduce me to people from all over the world, some of whom would go on to be some of my best friends. It would even teach me skills and new ways to approach life, from the importance of planning routes to the value of simplification. It would become one of the core tenets and is a catalyst for most of the success and joys in my life. But as great of a sport as orienteering is, it alone would not have been enough to get me where I am. Without the support of Navigation Games, it never would have brought me to where I am today.
In sixth grade when Navigation Games first came to teach me and my class orienteering, I didn’t peg the moment as life-changing. Sure orienteering was fun, but so was dodgeball; I never expected it to be anything more than a fun game to play occasionally. And if Barb Bryant [President of Navigation Games] had not reached out personally after the last class it probably would have stayed that way. But Barb did reach out, she called my parents and asked if I wanted to keep orienteering. Navigation Games was smaller at this point and there was no set way for me to continue orienteering through them, so Barb offered to coach me personally.
I said yes, and Barb and Ethan Childs started training me and a few others in orienteering. They took time out of their busy weeks to drive us to the woods and teach us orienteering skills. Ethan patiently taught us how to hold a compass and read the contours; Barb baked us cookies, taught us interesting science, and helped us sign up for races. Their kindness and love of orienteering effortlessly created one of the most supportive communities I have ever experienced.
As a testament to this community, within less than a year Barb had convinced our little group of 6th and 7th graders to fly halfway across the country and compete at the US Junior National meet in Ohio. Here she introduced me and my friends to the Junior and Senior National Teams. She helped us talk to the coaches and meet the people who make orienteering in the US work. She showed us what we could aim for and at the same time helped to make that aim a reality by continuing to train and mentor us. As a result, I joined the US Junior National Team and began training to compete at Junior Worlds.
In the years following my first exposure to orienteering, Navigation Games would begin to teach more and more classes and start to hire full-time staff. By 8th grade, it had grown enough to offer a summer internship for high schoolers through the City of Cambridge. Through this internship, about 10 kids and I got to work at Navigation Games. We created lesson plans, crafted promotional videos, led lessons, and even wrote blog posts. As an 8th grader, this internship taught me so much about how nonprofits work, the power of teaching, and the struggles of grabbing people’s attention.
This internship also helped to spark a love of teaching in me. Seeing kids’ faces light up when they understood the orienteering concept I was teaching or were just having fun spoke to me. I loved thinking of creative lessons that would educate in fun ways, and doing silly voices to grab the kids’ attention. I volunteered at Navigation Games throughout all of high school. In this time, I would continue to teach, but I would also work on grants, make maps, and edit the website. The internship would also motivate me to start teaching at my temple as a teacher's assistant, which,10 years later, I am still doing, now as a full teacher.
Entering high school, I began to find my own way in orienteering. At this point I was on the National Team. Over the next few years, I competed at both junior and senior world championships. I arranged to spend a college year abroad at Edinburgh University, where I trained with their large and competitive orienteering team. And now, I have another opportunity to train and teach abroad.
In an attempt to provide personal development and deep cultural knowledge, Harvard University funds a small number of students to travel abroad for 9-12 months after graduation. These grants are given to students who propose travel that is unique, meaningful to them, and exposes them deeply to a new culture. Last month, I was honored to win one of these awards to teach orienteering in Sweden in the coming year. My proposal focused on continuing my lifelong work of teaching orienteering, but doing it in the country of its birth, with the goal of more thoroughly understanding what works about US orienteering education and what does not. While there, my life will be separated into three equally important tasks. The first will be helping the local clubs of Gothenburg teach and deliver orienteering projects. The second will be continuing my own training in order to gain an understanding of what elite orienteering looks like. And the third will be learning Swedish.
I can't wait for this next adventure to begin, and I am beyond honored to have been awarded this grant.
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