Craughwell AC continued what has now become an annual tradition with the trip to the Scottish Indoors at the Kelvin Hall in Glasgow. We had our largest squad since our first trip 4 years ago – with a party of 29 going which includes 17 athletes.

Today's action saw the U20 and U18 age groups contest a full track and field program, where we had 5 athletes in action in the U18 age group and some fantastic performances.

 
Conor Gillen (2nd), Matthew Moran (7th) and Neil Greaney (5th)
in the U18 1500m

First into the fray, Maria McNamara competed over the 400m distance for the first time and ran a great time of 68.52 to set a new club record for the distance and take 5th place in the final. Maria followed this up later in the day with a season's best of 1.55m in the high jump. Maria had some great attempts at 1.60m, landing on the bar on some of them and had she cleared it, looked likely to have gone even higher. The competition was won at 1.65m, a height cleared by the gold and silver medallists with 1.60m taking bronze.

 
Maria McNamara about to commence her final attempt at 1.60m in the U18 high jump

In the 800m, Nicholas Sheehan had a towering performance to record not one but two PBs in the U18 grade. Nicholas is a year out of his age in this age group and also with an end of year birthday, it disadvantages him by almost 2 years over some of the other contestants. Running a super heat time of 2.04.99, Nicholas was the 5th fastest going into the final. With less than 2 hours to recover for the final and also a 200m coming up straight after the 800m final, it was a busy day for Nicholas. In the 800m final, Nicholas pu t himself right up in contention from the gun, holding 2nd place for much of the rest. When the kick came with 200m to go, Nicholas responded but the greater pace of the older runners saw him slip back into 4th, where he finished with a fantastic time of 2.02.95. This time is amazingly only 3 hundreths of a second behind Peadar Harvey's club record of 2.02.92 set in 2010 in Nenagh. Nicholas followed this up with a blistering 25.55 in the 200m only 30 minutes after the 800m had finished.

Nicholas Sheehan 4th in the U18 800m

Last event and highlght of the day saw Conor Gillen, Neil Greaney and Matthew Moran all line out in the final of the U18 boys 1500m. This was Neil's first time to race this distance and he showed remarkable composure to take 5th place in a time of 4.38.02. Matthew knocked a huge chunk off his 1500m PB when taking 7th place in 4.49.22. But the performance of the day came from Conor Gillen who raced to a fantastic silver medal in the 1500m in a time of 4.27.69. Conor ran a tactically perfect race, positioning himself in the top 3 from an early stage and yo-yoing frmo 2nd to 3rd and back again. Holding 2nd with about 500m to go, Conor was overtaken and slipped to 3rd but stuck on the shoulder of his opponent and with about 250m to go Conor accelerated past him and continued to put some distance between them to take the silver medal by a comfortable margin.

Tomorrow sees another 12 athletes in action:-

• U16s: Sinead Treacy, Tara McNally, Ciara Greene, Damien O'Boyle, Conor Duggan  
• U14s: Aoife Greene, Aisling Keady-Cummins, Michelle Duggan, Eimear Loughnane, Dylan Finn, Jim Crowley, Gearoid Treacy