Spirits were high as our athletes headed north to Sligo on a bright and sunny morning – another fine day for cross country. Wrong! The early morning sunshine that stretched the whole way to Sligo town was quickly replaced by misty grey clouds which occasionally decided to shed a few drops of rain to soften up the ground for the athletes.

Not that the ground needed to be softened up! It was a baptism of fire for some of our young athletes with underfoot conditions extremely wet. Even to walk the course proved to be an exercise in nautical navigation with runners well mucky by the time we had circled the 2 fields. It brought back memories of 2009 at this same course. In fairness to the organisers, it’s impossible to legislate for the weather and the course was in perfect condition when this event was held here in 2010.

Anyway, back to the races.

It was yet another fantastic day for athletes from local schools with Oranmore Boys NS reclaiming the senior boys’ team title and taking individual bronze in the junior race, Craughwell NS medalling in both the junior and senior girls’ team races, Killeeneen NS taking 2 individual top-3 medals with gold in the junior girls and silver in the junior boys, and Clarinbridge NS taking individual bronze in the senior boys’ race.

Both Oranmore and Craughwell have huge traditions in these races featuring in the team medals on many occasions and were joined by Ballymana, Killeeneen and Clarinbridge over the years.

The Miskella sisters Ailbhe and Emily led the way for Craughwell NS in the Junior Girls 800m with Ailbhe taking a commendable 12^th place and Emily placing 31^st, followed closely by Rebekah Flynn 32^nd, Sarah Woods 43^rd, Penny Wells 52^nd and Emma Jane Moran 78^th. Jennifer Hughes representing Claregalway NS placed 39^th and in the process helped her school to the gold medals, while Niamh Niland representing Killeeneen NS had a splendid race to take the individual gold medal. 

In the Senior Girls 1000m, Jane Trehy led Craughwell NS to bronze medals also with a fantastic 15^th place finish, followed by Roisin Hansbury 35^th, Sandra Greaney 38^th, Sarah McCartin 40^th, Tara Farrell 47^th and Aoife Raftery 65^th.  For Craughwell NS, these victories make it 4 times in 6 years that the school have medalled in both the junior and senior girls races – a fantastic achievement at Connacht level. Clarinbridge’s Amy Touhy also had a fine race when placing 16^th overall. 

Oranmore Boys NS also have a proud tradition in these races having won the junior boys race each year for the last 4 years and having medalled in the senior boys race in each of those 4 years also, including 2 Connacht titles. This year, the Oranmore senior team put in another exceptional performance to take the Connacht title with Conor Lorghain leading the team home in 5^th place followed by Cillian Doyle 21^st, Brendan Cummins 25^th, Sean Delaney 30^th, Estavio Filipe 32^nd and Alex Fernon 41^st. Clarinbridge’s Oisin Lyons also had a fine run in the senior boys race to take the individual bronze medal, as had Killeeneen’s Patrick Noonan when placing 26^th. 

In the junior boys race, unusually there was no luck on this occasion for the 3 Galway qualifiers (Killeeneen, Oranmore and Craughwell) despite all 3 schools fielding very good teams. Highest placed finishers were Phelim McCann (Killeeneen) and Sean Cannon (Oranmore) who took the individual silver and bronze medals. Ardrahan’s Eoin Murphy and Oisin McMahon placed 8^th and 15^th while Craughwell’s Kody McCann placed 23^rd. Killeeneen’s team placed 5^th overall with Phelim followed by Adam White 30^th, Daragh Mullins 54^th, Michael Donoghue 62^nd, Fionn McArdle 70^th and Christopher Brennan 81^st.

Oranmore Boys placed 6^th with Sean followed by Evan Grealish 45^th, Daniel Cahalane 55^th, Ben Taylor 60^th, Sean McDermott 76^th and Conal Doyle who suffered a bad fall 118^th. Craughwell placed 10^th with Kody followed by Kevin Molloy 46^th, Kyle Moorhead 57^th, Gavin Kelly 68^th, Shaun Gilligan 69^th and Jack Farrell 84^th. 

Full results of the races are at:-

http://galwayathletics.com/images/2012/resultsconnaughtprimaryschoolscc2012.pdf

Next event for many of these athletes will be the Galway uneven ages cross country championships in Loughrea on this coming Sunday, while there is another schools cross country organized by Cumann na mBunscoil in mid-November.