Scottish Orienteering Association
association for orienteering in Scotland

Scottish Orienteering Association (SOA), also known as Scottish Orienteering, is the association for Orienteering in Scotland and is a constituent association of the British Orienteering Federation. It is the Scottish Governing Body for the sport of Orienteering in Scotland.
Governance and organisation
The SOA's governing body is composed of President Richard Oxlade and directors in seven areas. The seven areas are Development, Marketing & Communications, Operations, Performance, Partnerships, Secretary and Treasurer. All members of the governing body are volunteers. The volunteers are supported by salaried staff in the roles of Chief Operating Officer, Events Manager, Coaching & Volunteering Officer, an Admin Assistant and three Part-Time Regional Development Officers. Due to the high volunteer to paid staff ratio, much of the work such is undertaken by volunteers.
The Associations membership is roughly 1,400 who act as volunteers, organising and staging events. Of the members many also coach and are members of SOA affiliated local clubs of which there are 18 local and 4 university.
Membership
The Associations membership is roughly 1,400.
“Scottish Orienteering Association” enters the record as association for orienteering in Scotland. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Scottish, Orienteering and Association can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Scottish Orienteering Association” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Scottish, Orienteering and Association provides the most credible route into that argument.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 17, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7437884. VIAF identifies the subject as 157090307. The Library of Congress control number is n79015349. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Scottish Orienteering Association” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.