Ethan Childs, a first-year student in UVM's Honors College, has been named to the 2013 U.S. Junior World Orienteering Championship (JWOC) team. He is one of just six young men and six young women, age 20 and under, selected to represent the USA in international competition this summer in the Czech Republic.

Childs has competed around the U.S., Canada and Europe in orienteering, a navigation sport in which competitors rely on a map and compass, and not on GPS, to find their way through a landscape -- including deserts, forests, mountains or urban parks -- to locate and check in at electronic controls placed in advance in the terrain. The fastest competitor to find all the controls in the correct order and return to the finish wins.

This will be Childs' third JWOC; he previously represented the U.S. in Poland and Slovakia. His achievements include winning the 2012 North American Championship for junior boys in the middle distance, and a sweep of the championships in the sprint, middle, and long distance races at the 2010 North Americans. At the 2012 JWOC in Slovakia, he was the top placing competitor for the United States. Along with his brother, he won the Wicked Hard Night-O race in 2012.
 
Orienteering started in Sweden in the 1800s as a military training exercise and came to the U.S. in the 1960s.