Hard-fought 4th Place for Maria McNamara in Multi-Events
Maria McNamara and Rachel Finnegan were the club's sole representatives in the National Combined Events Championships at the weekend in Tullamore. Both athletes performed exceptionally well, with each claiming three PBs.
Maria recorded a PB of 15.1 in the 80m hurdles, which was her weakest of the 5 events and followed this up with a good long jump of 4.42m to place 5th in that event. In the shot putt, she threw a new PB of 7.48m which is also a new club record for the U15 age group. Placed 8th out of 14 at this point, next up was her strongest event – the high jump, where she finished up joint first in that event with a leap of 1.51m. Jumping 1.27m, 1.33m, 1.39m, 1.42m, 1.45m, 1.48m (with 2 knocked bars), 1.51m (with 1 knocked bar) and 3 big efforts at 1.54m, it was certainly Maria's most impressive performance in high jump to date. In particular her 3rd attempt at 1.54m saw her sail over the bar but just nicked it with her feet as she glided through the air. Placed 5th going into the final event in the 800m, Maria produced another PB effort to finish 3rd in her heat in a time of 2.44.7 and move up another notch on the leaderboard to take 4th place overall – an excellent performance which yielded a total of 2264 points over the 5 events.
In the U18 girls heptathlon, Rachel Finnegan had the unusual experience of being the only competitor but nevertheless managed to produce the goods in the 2 day event, with 3 PBs over the 7 diciplines – 27.90 in the 200m, 16.3 in the 100m hurdles and 4.81m in the long jump. Rachel added further points with performances of 1.35m in the high jump, 5.64m in the shot putt, 9.41m in the javelin and 2.42.0 in the 800m to yield a points total of 3180 over the 7 events.
Congratulations also to Caoimhe Quill who stepped up an age to take part in the U16 high jump at the B All-Irelands and came away with a bronze medal with a jump of 1.25m. Full results of both events are at :-