National Medals for Carraig na bhFear AC in Club Cross-Country Season Finale!

by Richard Hawkins

IT was a long trip West for the Carraig na bhFear AC athletes who travelled to Westport for the All-Ireland ‘B’ Cross-country Championships on Sunday 9th February. Great to see Cork clubs travelling in force and winning medals on the day. Cathal Walsh was in action in the Boys U13 race, finishing in 50th place overall. Cathal was 5th scorer for the Cork team who unfortunately just finished outside the medal positions in 4th place in the County competition. Cathal is very experienced at National level and will build again on this experience for next year.

The girls U15 race was very competitive, an experienced Carraig na bhFear team had to settle for 6th place overall which belies a great effort by the team. There was medal success for Emma Johnson who won individual bronze in 12th place overall and was joined by Hannah Coffey as scorers on the Cork team who won the silver medal in the county competition. Well done to Allie Philips and Rebecca McCarthy on their performances for the team. Many thanks to the parents who supported the athletes on the long journey to Mayo!

The Intervarsity Championships were held in the National Indoor arena on Sunday 9th also. Congratulations to Orla Coffey on a fantastic bronze medal for UCC in the Women’s heptathlon. Orla opened with a steady long jump and hurdles race but built on these results with a PB in the Shot Putt and a PB equalling 1:55 in high jump. Orla was in 4th place heading into the final event which was the 800m. A brilliant 2nd place in 2:23 elevated Orla to the bronze medal position, just rewards for a gutsy effort at the end of a long day! Timmy Hawkins ran in Heat C of the Men’s 1500m. It was a difficult race to Pace with the winner Harry Colbert running a fast time of 3:54, Timmy started well but the fast pace took its toll with Timmy finishing in 3rd place in the heat in 4:20. A valuable experience for Timmy in is first year at Inter-Varsities. Blessing Alamu (SETU) had a best long-jump effort of 5.09M to finish 8th of 20 athletes. In the Shot-Putt competition, Blessing had a best throw of 9.46m for 9th place overall.

Ciaran Nugent took another step forward in his indoor season placing 1st in Heat 3 of the 400m (guest) race at the National Indoor League Finals in Abbotstown on Saturday 8th in a excellent time of 50.88s.

Other News: 

The Janssen BHAA 5k race in little Island on Sunday attracted a bumper crowd of 415 on a dry but cold morning. Brian Hawkins (15th) and Peter Hawkins (19th ) had impressive PB runs of 16:48 and 16:51 respectively. Richard Hawkins was 3rd M55 in 19:47 and running well up the field of runners were Cliona Lynch (23:04) and Megan Murphy (24:11). Tadhg Crowley ran a Tramore Valley Parkrun PB of 18:06 to finish as second runner over the line on Saturday, well done to Tadhg!

Look Ahead:

 Best of luck to our Juvenile athletes who will compete in the Munster schools Cross-Country Championships in Tramore Valley park on Friday February 14th and over the following weekend in the U15 to U19 Munster Indoor Championships in Nenagh.