Leinster Indoor Juvenile Relays

The Leinster juvenile indoor relays were held at the new indoor stadium in Athlone last Saturday. We sent six teams down to compete, a great turnout for our first time competing in this competition in a good number of years. First off on the day was our girls U13 team in the 4 x 100m relay,  the team made up of Ivie Okome, Karen Hayes, Shauna Coffey and Aine Cooney ran a great heat winning easily and qualifying for the final in a time of 58.5s, which was the second fastest time of the day overall in the U13 event. Unfortunately all did not go to plan in the final and the girls finished 5^th with a time of 60s, they were very disappointed but the experience will stand to them and we hope to enter them for the All Ireland relays in April. The boys U19 were up next and they took gold in the 4 x 200m event in a time of 1:47s, the team consisted of Tom Gannon, Conor Duncan, Ciaran McCarty and Ross Hunter. The even ages events were up next and we had two girls U12 teams competing made up of Blue Team: Emma Coroner, Orla Hayes, Ella Healy and Rachel McPartlin, and Yellow Team: Aoife Rutherford, Ciara Coffey, Aoife Foster and Aine Foster. Both teams competed well with our blue team winning silver in the final, with a storming run from Emma Coroner on the final leg bringing the girls from third to second over the last 20 metres in a time of 61.5s. Our boy’s u12 team made up of Finn Mooney, Rohan Wardick, Matthew Buckley and Brian Kiely ran a good race but did not make it to the final, this was a young team with most of the lads U12 again next year and are ones to watch for the future. Our U16 boy’s team also medalled on the day winning bronze in the 4 x 200m event, the team of Philip Marron, Stephen Shaw, Owen Clayton and Mikey O’Malley all ran good legs and this was a great result seeing that the lads only got together in the last 2 weeks to train for the event. Unfortunately Tom Kilgannon and Peter Kilgannon could not make it on the day as both were sick would have been very disappointed to miss out.

I think everyone enjoyed the day and it was a great experience for our Athletes to compete in what can only be described as a World class facility. This is a great annual event and we intend to have more teams competing next year. Thanks to all parents and coaches who travelled and helped out on the day.