Big honour for Craughwell AC as club’s top girls bound for Europe

CRAUGHWELL AC underlined its status as one of the top juvenile athletics clubs in the country after it was confirmed last week that the club’s U20 female team has been selected to represent Ireland at the 2019 European Champion Clubs Cup.
The club was selected on the back of a plethora of superb performances by its athletes at the recent National Junior Championships in Tullamore and its selection is, no doubt, a major achievement for the competitors, their coaches and, indeed, for the club, which was founded in 1968.
“If we won a Connacht medal 10, 12 or 15 years ago, we would have been very happy. Now though, we are winning maybe 20 medals in the national outdoors and another 20 medals in the national indoors. So, it is good,” says Craughwell AC coach Michael Tobin.
“As it stands, we are consistently in the top 10 in the country in terms of medal success and it is pretty good coming from a rural area. A lot of the other clubs would be big city clubs with lots of kids to pick from. So, we are definitely punching above our weight in those competitions.”
Tobin is joined by athletes Laura Cunningham (18), Ciana Reidy (18), Lorraine Delaney (18) and his daughter Shauna (17) and they all hope to be on the airplane in September of next year to the European Championships which, in recent times, have been held in Leiria in Portugal.
Although the club has 26 athletes eligible to compete in the U17 to U20 age bracket, only a squad of 20, along with six officials, can travel in the official party. Unfortunately, the age restriction does mean some of this year’s athletes, most notably Aisling Keady and Caron Ryan, cannot compete.
“We had originally thought we were qualified for this September and then discovered later that it was a year in advance. They (Keady and Ryan) were just unlucky. They are unfortunately overage (for 2019) but they will come along as managers,” he outlines.
In all, there are 19 events at the championships, namely the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500m, 3000m, 100m hurdles, 400m hurdles, 2000m steeplechase, 4x100m relay, 4x400m relay, high jump, pole vault, long jump, triple jump, shot putt, discus, hammer and javelin.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and  county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.