Bellevue native and Olin College student Anne Wilkinson was recently one of only six women from across the country selected to the US Junior World Orienteering Championship team.

Wilkinson will have a chance to represent the US in international competition in the Czech Republic during the summer.

The 19-year-old began competing in the sport, which involves navigating swaths of forest, desert, mountain and other terrain with only a compass and map, as a student at Kirkland’s Environmental and Adventure School.

Orienteering is a navigation sport. Using only a map and compass, but no GPS, competitors navigate through the deserts, forests, mountains and some urban parks to locate and check in at electronic controls that are placed in advance in the terrain. The fastest competitor to find all the controls in the correct order and return to the finish wins.

The sport started in Sweden in the 1800s as a military training exercise and came to the US in the 1960s.

Orienteering USA is the national governing body of US orienteering. Founded in 1971 and comprised of 60 local orienteering clubs, it reports that approximately 55,000 orienteering entries were generated in the US in 2012. This is a result of almost 800 national and local meets. For more information: orienteeringusa.org.