Great event hosted by Castlelyons
Spring is in the air and that means one thing in cross country running, the All-Ireland B Juvenile Championships. Our neighbouring club, St Nicholas AC in Castlelyons, had the great honour of hosting this illustrious event in testing weather conditions and the event turned out to be a very successful one.
Our own club had 20 juveniles taking part as well as our Intermediate men’s team, which ran late in the afternoon. There was a very high attendance from Cork clubs as expected and there were great individual performances at all ages from some of our leading Cork athletes, notably Lizzie Lee of Leevale and Tim O’Donoghue of East Cork who each won their Masters titles in some style. At Juvenile age levels, Cork dominated the inter County medals, winning gold in almost every age group.
Our U11 team girls of Mary Jane Casey, Lara Byrne, Molly Hartigan, Aoife and Grace O’Connor, were the first race of the day. A very large field tackled the cold conditions over the 1,000 metre course. Mary Jane was always up at the head of the race and she looked comfortable finishing in the top ten girls in the race, finishing 9th overall, securing an individual All-Ireland medal. Congratulations to Mary Jane, a really fabulous performance, also earning her a county medal.
The U11 boys team of Oscar Cunningham, Noah Keane, Zach Pyne, Oisin Feeney and Adam O’Connor had a fine steady race and they finished in the middle of the very large field of runners.
The U13 girls team of Ciara Hayes, Amy O’Connell, Teegan Murphy, Willow O’Gorman and Maebh O’Connell also performed strongly.
The U13 boys team of Alan Cotter, Ryan Whelan and Cathal Higgins also performed very strongly. Alan worked hard to stay in the leading group all the way around the 1,500 metre course and was rewarded for his efforts, placing high enough to earn a county gold medal.
Charlotte Norman also had a great start to her U15 race over 2,500 metres and was in the leading group all of the way around and finished just outside the top ten but also earned a county gold medal for her gritty performance.
Our last competitors for the club went out in the last race of the day, the men’s intermediate category over 8,000 metres - 4 long laps over the very mucky course.
The St Catherine’s men’s team were Dave, Liam and Laurence O’Connor and Mike Byrnes, Kieran Harte and John Mulcahy. They finished 9th overall in the team category of this All-Ireland championship.
At this stage of the day, the ground was so bad in places that spikes were getting stuck in the mud and athletes were finishing the race with one or no shoes! Incredible performance to even finish the race in very cold and windy conditions but fair dues to all of the athletes from all over the country for turning up and representing their club and county in these testing conditions.
Great credit to all of our club runners for being at an All-Ireland championships as this was, for many of them, their first time competing at this level. Hopefully, they enjoyed the experience so much that they will be looking to go again.