Gold medals for Costello, Quirke and Lally at Track & Field finals

THE cream of the country’s top young athletes were in action at the Aviva Irish Schools Athletic Association Track and Field finals at Tullamore over the weekend, and Galway competitors proudly took their place amongst this elite bunch, eventually coming home with a haul of eight medals, three of them gold, and a number of excellent performances.

Star performer of the day was probably Dunmore CS student Laura Ann Costello who ran brilliantly to capture the Junior 100m title, and then followed up this performance later in the day with another medal winning performance in the 200m, where she finished a close second to the girl from Ballymena, Roisin McGuckian whom she had earlier relegated to second in the 100m.

Alanna Lally, from Presentation Athenry, was another dual medal winner on the day as she first powered her way to the Inter 300m gold medal before following this up later in the day with a storming anchor leg for her schools 4x100m relay team, guiding them from fifth place to third in the home straight to take the bronze medal. Indeed it was a great day for Presentation Athenry, as the first gold medal winner of the day was another athlete from that school, Evan Quirke, clearing 5.78m to win the Junior Long Jump in a very close competition.

The Senior Boys 400m Hurdles race proved to be one of the landmark events of the day, featuring the European Youth Champion, Ben Kiely from Waterford, The Tailteann Schools Inter-Provincial Champion, Evan Maguire from St. Joseph’s Galway and the reigning Irish Intermediate Schools Champion, Anthony Hebron from St. Mary’s in Galway. It was a fantastic race with the two Galway athletes really putting it up to the outstanding Waterford student, but in the end having to run from the outside lane proved a hurdle too much for Hebron as he faded to unluckily finish fourth, while Kiely proved just too strong for Maguire, pipping him for gold in the final run in. St. Mary’s did have a measure of consolation later in the day however, as Junior athlete Samuel Samson ran a great tactical race to finish third in the 800m.

The final Galway medal winners came in the very last race of the day as the fast finishing Senior Boys 4x100m relay team from St. Enda’s College, anchored by Ben Cooney, ran a great race to take the silver medal and finish off what was a great day’s athletics.

Of course it’s not all about winners, and throughout the day there were a number of excellent performances from other Galway athletes, most notably from Colaiste Iognaid’s Maebh Brannigan who finished fifth in the Senior 1500m, Caomhan Conaghan from Loughrea VS who finished 6th in the Inter Triple Jump and 7th in the High Jump, and Emmet Creavan from the same schools who managed 5th in the Senior Triple Jump.

There was also another great run from Junior Cross Country champion Padraig Creaven from St. Mary’s as, knowing the 1500m race was too short for him, he made the brave sprint for home from 700m out and, then, just saw his efforts fail as he faded to fifth in the final run to some faster finishing athletes.