Laura Cunningham and Lorraine Delaney
Silver and Bronze Medal Winners in the U17 Girls Triple Jump

Another glorious day of athletics success took place in Tullamore on day 3 of the National Juvenile Track & Field where the club had 20 athletes in action.

Today was Laura Cunningham and Lorraine Delaney’s turn to take center-stage where they put in a magnificent performance in the U17 Girls Triple Jump to take 2nd and 3rd place. Laura 2nd jump of 10.29m earned her the silver medal in an impressive series of jumps. Having placed 4th in both the AAI U16 triple jump and Community Games triple jump last year, it was wonderful for Laura to stand on the podium today as an AAI individual medallist for the first time. And even more wonderful to be standing alongside club-mate and friend Lorraine Delaney whose 5th attempt was an exceptional 10.14m to take the bronze medal. Amazingly it was Lorraine’s first competition in triple jump and to come away with a medal and a big jump was very impressive. Laura’s and Lorraine’s jumps place them 3rd on 4th on the club’s all-time list for triple jump with Sarah Finnegan holding the club senior record with 10.54m and Melissa Mullins the junior record with 10.36m and Laura and Lorraine next with today’s jumps.

Jerry Keary and Daniel Callanan-Forde on the podium with silver
in the U17 Boys High Jump and U17 Boys Triple Jump

Daniel Callanan-Forde made it a treble triple jump for the club with another fantastic silver medal in the U17 boys with a best of 12.64m on his 6th and final jump – adding to his long jump medal from the nationals 2 weekends ago. Jerry Keary continued his exceptional summer with silver in the U17 boys high jump with a leap of 1.85m, a little down on his recent superhuman form but nonetheless a superb achievement coming only a week after the highs of his international silver in Kent.

Also in the medals Chloe Casey won her first National medal in the colours of Craughwell AC with a PB and huge throw of 12.99m in the third round of the U15 shot putt to take the silver – a massive throw and missing out on gold to a throw which set a new championship record for this age group.

Chloe Casey, silver medallist in the U15 Girls Shot Putt

There were many more fine performances which came very close to the medals. Evan Hallinan was unlucky to miss out on a medal in the U12 boys high jump with a best of 1.35m which was the same as the bronze medallist but placed him 5th when account was taken of knocked bars. Only for a broken toe which prevented him training since the Connachts, Evan would have almost certainly medalled.

Conor Hoade was also in fine form in the U13 Boys Long Jump leaping a new PB of 4.49m on his first attempt and improving this further to 4.52m on his 4th attempt to place 6th overall. Cian Lavan was also impressive with a best of 1.30m in the U12 high jump to place 9th, only 1 jump away from the medal positions and a PB by 10cm for Cian.

Three U12 girls proudly represented the club in the shot putt with Rosemary Maduka placing 9th, Aoibhe Fahy 12th and Shauna Donoghue 13th. Saoirse Pierce had a great National debut with a 10th place finish in the U13 Girls high jump, a position shared by Padraig Martyn in the U14 Boys long jump. Pascal Walsh placed 5th in his heat of the 80m with a good time of 11.21 while performances were slightly down for some of our long jumpers but nevertheless all will have gained valuable experience with Garvin Surlis and Conor Roberts 11th and 12th in the U15 boys long jump, Leanagh Gilligan 13th in the U15 girls long jump and Aine Kelly 15th in the U14 girls long jump.

All in all it was a wonderful day for the club and any disappointments for some of our younger athletes will disappear when they look back on old articles on this website and see that our U17s were close to the medals in their younger years but kept plugging away at it and now are enjoying the success that all our dedicated athletes so richly deserve.