Top 20 finishes for Kerry runners at Cross-country Championships

Tessa Dennison

THE Irish Life Health National Novice and Uneven Age Cross-Country Championships were held at the Navan Adventure Centre last Saturday. Despite the wet and windy conditions there were fine performances from the few Kerry athletes in attendance with all four juvenile runners finishing in the top 20 and winning provincial team medals.

Top of the action was Kenmare’s Luke Merrigan who finished third in the U-11 boys 1,500m race. A great achievement for Luke, who will be under age for this event again in 2019. Luke was first Munster athlete across the line, leading the U-11 boys team to gold provincial medals.

Shauna McCarthy (Farranfore Maine Valley) competed in the U-15 girls race. Despite losing one of her shoes early on in the race she battled hard to come from 35th place to finish 11th and was part of Munster team to get silver.

There was also an 11th place finish and gold provincial team medal for Niamh O’Mahony (An Riocht) in U-17 girls. Iveragh’s Adam Quigley was well placed throughout the boy’s U-13 race, eventually finishing 17th. This was good enough to win Adam a gold medal as a scoring member of the winning Munster team.

The Kerry Novice Men’s team put in a brave effort to finish in ninth place overall. The team, in finishing order, were Conor O’Mahony and James Doran (An Riocht), Arthur Fitzgerald (Farranfore Maine Valley), Martin Dineen and Tommy O’Brien (An Riocht), George McCarthy (Farranfore Maine Valley) and Trevor Dunne (An Riocht). The An Riocht Novice Men’s team finished in 14th place.