It was another golden weekend for Craughwell AC with athletes in action in Santry, Tullamore and Templemore. Cathriona Farrell led the way when adding yet another National Junior High Jump title to her collection in Tullamore on Sunday 26th June when leaping 1.71m. This makes it a hat-trick of outdoor and indoor junior titles for Cathriona – an exceptional achievement. Cathriona’s performance in this event has been very consistent with each victory close to her PB:

While it might appear that 2011 has been a quiet year so far for Cathriona, incredibly it’s her 5th National high jump title this year – having earlier won the National Senior Indoor title, the Universities Indoor title and the Universities Outdoor title.On this occasion, the battle was put up to Cathriona by some of the country’s younger jumpers who cleared 1.65m and 1.68m – with Cathriona having to jump 1.71m to win the title in windy conditions. Later on the day, Cathriona demonstrated her versatility when also taking a silver medal in the National Junior long jump with a jump of 5.24m. All of her jumps were beyond the 5m mark and in fact she was unlucky not to win the competition as she picked up a minor injury on her second jump which meant having to hold back a little on the following jumps and it was only in the last round of jumps that she was relegated from the top spot to second place.

But there are several more up and coming Cathrionas in the club with some outstanding performances at the National finals in Templemore from athletes in the U9, 10 and 11 age groups to take home 4 sets of national medals. In the U9 girls relay, the club’s young athletes raced to a splendid bronze medal in the 4x100m relay in a time of xx with their team of Ava Finn, Kate Reilly, Aine Kelly, Leanne Lynskey and sub Laoise Bond. Ava Finn and Kate Reilly combined for further glory when taking silver medals in the long jump team event with jumps of 3.10m and 2.89m. And in the U10 girls 4x100m, the team of Sarah McCartin, Jane Trehy, Ailbhe Miskella, Mia Waters and sub Eva Kelly raced to silver medals to make it an exceptional day for the club.

The day was rounded off by fine jumping by Ryan Gallagher and Cian Garman in the U10 boys’ long jump to take the bronze medals with jumps of 3.48m and 3.24m.  Both boys along with Alex Evans, Finbar McFadden and Garvin Surlis were unlucky not to feature on the podium in the relay when finishing outside the qualifying positions in their heat in a time of 63.83 – a time which would have taken bronze in the final. Finbar and Alex were evey more unlucky when finishing in 4th place in the U10 500m in times of 1.37.70 and 1.42.87m while Micheál McFadden and Conor Hughes also narrowly missed out on medals when finishing 5th in the U11 boys long jump with leaps of 3.93m and 2.96m.