Kerry medals galore at Junior and Under-23 championships

LAST Saturday some of the county’s finest Junior and Under 23 athletes headed to Templemore in Tipperary for the Munster Junior and Under 23 championships.

Tralee Harriers had a great afternoon in the sun with individual medals aplenty. In the Junior women’s competition there was gold for Leanne Cronin in the shot, silver for Rachel Bowler in the long jump and bronze in the triple jump, silver for Fiona Doyle in the high jump and bronze for Orla O’Reilly in the 100m.

In the Junior men’s group there were bronze medals for Harriers athletes Louis Byrne in the 800m and Oisin Spillane in the 1,500m.

Also in Junior men for St Brendan’s Aaron Malik won silver in discus and bronze in pole vault while Darragh Courtney claimed silver in high jump with a clearance of 1.90m.

In a thrilling final of the men’s 4 x 100m relay the team of Nikolia O’Connor, Luke O’Carroll, Basit Oyebanji and Cillian Griffin stormed to victory in a new Munster record of 43.96 seconds, taking three seconds off the previous record and beating Leevale into second place by just 1/100th of a second.

In the Under-23 women’s competition, there was gold for Aoife O’Carroll in the women’s 200m and 400m.

Elsewhere, Sarah Leahy from Killarney Valley won the Junior women’s 100m and was third in the 200m. There was also a bronze medal for team mate Ruth Courtney in the shot.

Aoife Mahony (Lios Tuathail) won gold in the Junior women’s 800m.

Rossa Foley (Farranfore Maine Valley) brought home four gold medals in the Under-23 men’s throwing events, taking the title in the shot, discus, weight for distance and javelin, where he threw a new personal best of 46.56m.

There were also two gold medals for An Riocht’s Dion Marcus in the U-23 men’s 200m and 400m.

Meanwhile, Shona Heaslip (An Riocht) was a welcome winner at the Garmin Great Ireland Run which incorporated the National 10km Championships in the Phoenix Park on April 15. Shona crossed the line in 34:52 ahead of Kerry O’Flaherty (Newcastle) in 35:00 with England’s Gemma Steel third in 35:08. The Irish team topped the podium with Laura Shaughnessy (DSD) finishing in a close fourth place.

An Riocht’s Niamh O’Sullivan had a great run to finish in first place in the O-55 age category.

Elsewhere, the IUAA National track and field finals at the Mary Peters track in Belfast on April 13 and 14 saw Travane Morrison (Tralee Harriers), representing IT Tralee set the track alight when qualifying for the 100m final in a time of 10.50 seconds and the 200m final in an equally impressive 21.65 seconds. On Saturday he stepped into the blocks for the 100m final and the whole of Kerry held its breath, but Travane was not to be beaten and crossed the line in 10.56 seconds for gold. The Jamaican born athlete went on to take silver in the 200m in a time of 21.7 seconds.

Also topping the podium was another Harriers and IT Tralee athlete Solage Diogo who won the women’s triple jump with a great leap of 11.87m. There was also gold for David Kenny (Farranfore Maine Valley and CIT) in the 3km walk.

Rossa Foley (Farranfore Maine Valley and IT Tralee) finished fourth in the men’s weight for distance. Dion Marcus (An Riocht and GMIT) missed out on a place in the men’s 200m final but his time of 23.03 was a new GMIT record.