Olympic Games dream is about to come true

Date Published: {J}

NATIONAL table tennis champion Rena McCarron Rooney has thought about nothing else other than securing a place on the Irish team for this Summer’s Paralympics Games in London over the past three-and-a-half-years. Indeed, at times, it all but consumed her.

Last week, the Barna woman had her qualification for the 2012 Games confirmed, so marking the end of one journey and the beginning of another. Hearing her story, though, it never ceases to amaze the lengths some people will go in the pursuit of a dream.

Yes, she has taken part in European and World Championships previously, but the Paralympics, which has eluded her up until now, is to McCarron Rooney what the Olympics has represented for Paul Hession and Olive Loughnane and others. For her, it is the greatest show on earth.

“I can’t stop smiling now, I really can’t,” beams the Slavery, Buncrana native as she sits in NUIG Kingfisher. “I qualified in ninth position and only the top 10 were selected. However, from position nine to 12, you can often get a wildcard slot or it is taken up by a team partner, so I was a bit nervous that I would lose the slot to the politics of it all. But I got a straight qualifier, so I really can’t believe it. It has been four gruelling years of on the road travelling.”

Indeed, both McCarron Rooney and her husband Ronan, who is also seeking qualification for the 2012 Games in the same discipline, have dedicated themselves wholly to this dream, with the Paralympics athlete herself giving up her full-time job of 15 years with the Students Union in NUI Galway to work towards her goal.

“This was my aim and I had to dedicate myself to this. I had been competing while I was working, but you can’t give the commitment you need to give when you are working full-time. You can’t do the weekly travel, you can’t do the competitions. I have been training twice a week in Dublin, along with travelling up there every second weekend, while I also did 11 international tournaments. You couldn’t do that if you were in a full-time job.”

At present, she works part-time as a Sports Development Officer for the Irish Wheelchair Association in the West of Ireland and McCarron Rooney notes “they have been great.” She adds: “They have given me great flexibility. Basically, my work is scheduled around my training and around my tournaments. So, that has been brilliant.”

An interesting facet of this work has been the Galway Speeders, a junior wheelchair club that plays table tennis, basketball, karate, kayaking, sailing, swimming and athletics. “We have 10 juniors and they are called the Galway Speeders. We train in the Kingfisher on a Saturday morning, from 10am to 12noon.

“We are based in the Kingfisher because it is so accessible and so open and so friendly and so central as well to the whole of Galway County. The children would be of all different abilities. Six years old would be the youngest to 18 years, which would be the oldest.”

In many respects, McCarron Rooney, who is the middle child in six, is the ideal person to spearhead the initiative. She, herself, was confined to a wheelchair at the age of 14 following a car accident in 1979. While such a horrific ordeal would eat away at the soul of a lesser person, McCarron Rooney’s positivity carried her through.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.