National Community Games Weekend 1 & 2

 

We had our best ever Community Games this year with a record number of individual and team medals coming from track, field and cross country, Aimee Doherty got weekend 1 off to a great start winning gold for Meath in the girls u12 cross country relay combing with her team mates from Dunboyne Doireann Ni Fhlartharta, Abigail Knox and Aoife McCormack. We had 13 athletes competing over Saturday and Sunday on Weekend 2, Emma Coroner was the first to medal on Saturday finishing 4^th in the girls u14 long jump, just a few hours later Daragh Casey secured gold in the u14 boys long jump with a personal best of 5.52m. Amazingly all of our athletes qualified out of their heats in both the individual sprint, middle distance and relay heats on Saturday to make for a great day of athletics on Sunday.

 Our younger athletes showed no sign of nerves on finals day with Caoimhe Fitzsimons putting in a faultless display of hurdling in the girl’s u10 60mH taking home bronze and her first National medal, Laura Kelly also placed 3^rd in the girl’s u10 200m pacing it to perfection in a tight finish. Ella Healy had a tough semi in the girls u12 100m and was unfortunate not to make it through to the final, Matthew Buckley put in another powerful performance in the u14 100m to secure our 2^nd gold of the weekend, Ivie Okome was in good form also finishing 4^th in the u14 girls 100m. In the middle distance events Tom Kilgannon put in a great run in the boys u12 600m, Tom had a lot of ground to make up with 200m to go but with a strong kick over the last 150m he secured 3^rd place with a pb of 1:43s. Karen Hayes who had been coming into some great form recently ran a very smart race in what was a tactical u14 girls 800m final, Karen kept her cool and improved her pb by 4 second to finish 4^th to take our 8^th individual medal of the weekend.

Lili O’ Connor put in a good performance also out of age in the girls u14 hurdles making it to the final where she finished 6^th. Ciaran Rogers had a pb in the long puck just missing out on the final.

With the individual finals out of the way our mixed relay teams took to the track, our u13 team after only finishing 3^rd in their heat and semi-final upped a gear in the final to finish 3^rd taking an unexpected medal, great team performance from Aimee Doherty, Ella Healy, Oisin Kelly and Tom Kilgannon. Our u15 mixed team went from strength to strength over the weekend, the team of Daragh Casey, Matthew Buckley, Emma Coroner and Aine Cooney ran a terrific final and were just pipped on the line for gold by Limerick according to the Community Games officials, this raised a lot of eyebrows as most on- lookers were convinced our mixed team had held on for the win. A great performance none the less from our team running a pb of 49.4s in difficult conditions.  Well done also to club member Rachel Doherty who secured a 4^th place medal on Weekend 1 in the girl’s u14 backstroke.