July saw the All-Ireland juvenile championships take place in Tullamore. The first athlete into action was Fionn Hogan on the 1st who was competing in the National championships for the first time. Fionn finished a very respectable 12th out of a very large field with very little between most of the competitors. The following wednesday night saw the running of the Tribal Track meeting in An Riocht track in Castleisland. This event allowed athletes to get valuable race time before going to the National Championships without having to travel too far. Dermot Dineen and Ryan Vickers ran the 800 metres. Roisin Daly ran the 100 along with Natasha Myers who also ran the 200. Both ran very fast times in the torrential rain. Hopefully we will see more of these types of events being held in the future.
On Saturday
8th Tiernan Lynch was first across the line in the Inch Parkrun. In Killarney
Laura Bradley came home in 1st place in her category. In Tralee all
3 of the Hogan family ran with Roisin and Fionn setting PB’s
The junior
parkrun in Tralee on the following day, Ethan and Amelia O’Sullivan ran along
with Sophie O Brien who set yet another PB. The Star of the Laune Sports were
on Sunday. Ethan and Amelia made the trip to Killorglin and competed in many
events and got to meet special Olympic medal winner Ryan Griffin. In the
All-Ireland juvenile championships (U 14-U19) were on in Tullamore. Kevin
O’Shea came 3rd in the Discus. He also finished 6th in
the Javelin which was held in very windy conditions. Ryan Vickers ran storming
last 150 metres race in the boys U14 800 where he closed down a 10 metre lead
to win smashing the existing record by 3 seconds.
Day 2 and 3
of the All-Ireland juvenile championships were held in a very wet Tullamore on
the week of the 22nd Competition in these events is exceptionally
high and getting to compete here is an achievement in its own right. We had 3
athletes competing and all did exceptionally well. On Saturday Roisin Daly
lined up in the 2nd heat of the u-16 100 metres. Despite a slow
start she recovered well and closed the gap to the leaders all the way to the
line finishing 5th. Qualifying for the final was going to be difficult
with only the first 2 in each heat going through. She was exceptionally unlucky
missing the final by a mere 3 1/000ths of a second which is really only the
width of her singlet. Had she been in any of the other heat she would have
qualified for the final. She still had the consolation of knocking over 3/10ths
of a second off her personal best. Here time of 12.82 in her heat would have
gotten her 4th place in the final.
Ryan
Vickers competing in the 80 metres won his heat comfortably. In the final a
problem with his starting blocks caused him to start poorly. In a frantic
finish he came 4th missing out on bronze by 3/1000ths of 1 second.
He can take some satisfaction in knocking ¼ second off his time in the Munster
Championships.
On Sunday 23rd
Niamh O Shea was competing in the U 17 Discus in the pouring rain. The standard
exceptionally high and she did very well to finish 5th improving on
her throw in the Munster championship by 2 metres.
Ryan
Vickers had a chance for redemption in the 200 metres on Sunday. In a
tremendous battle with Sean O Riordan of Fanahan McSweeney AC in Cork he came
second in 24.72 seconds losing by 5/100ths of a second. These 2 very talented
athletes finished well clear of the field. Had this been run in better
conditions the record of 24.11 would have been under serious threat. Well done
to sprints coach Jerome Foley for all his work with Roisin and Ryan over the
last few months.
Back in
Kerry Ethan and Amelia O Sullivan ran in the Tralee junior parkrun along with
Sophie O Brien who set yet another PB.
In the 5K
run Jerome Foley ran in Killarney and Fionn Hogan smashed his PB in Tralee with
an very impressive time of 22.24.