Archive News
Self confessed ÔtearawayÕ is now All-Ireland champion
Date Published: 31-May-2012
SOME people have a great story to tell and recently crowned All-Ireland kettlebells long cycle champion Sarah Smith is certainly one of them. From being a self-confessed “tearaway” in her teenage years to becoming a successful entrepreneur in her early twenties, Smith, now a recognised top fitness instructor, has never been afraid to embrace a new and different challenge.
The last week certainly underlines this, having officially opened her new fitness studio in Mulvoy Business Park; launched her own kettlebells application for the smart phone; and, last but not least, rejoiced in her selection on the Irish team to compete in an international event abroad in a sport that she only took up competitively a year or so ago.
Indeed, Smith is just one of two Galway people to make the travelling Irish team to Latvia in September, with her training partner Ronnie Warde, who only started kettlebells six months ago, also selected following his All-Ireland victory in the long cycle 24kgs event recently.
For those of you not familiar with a kettlebell, it is basically a bowling ball with a handle. However, as Smith reveals, kettlebells has become the “latest fitness craze, with all the celebs doing it now”. That, though, is the more commercial side of the sport, offering rapid weight-loss by working with the kettlebells at a quick pace.
While Smith does teach these classes at her studio, the kettlebells discipline she was crowned All-Ireland champion in is known as Girevoy – or soft style sports training – which focuses on “endurance, slow pace, slow breathing and rhythm”.
This aspect of the gruelling sport – it is as demanding as weight-lifting – was developed by the Russians two centuries ago, according to Smith, but it has only began to gain a foothold in Ireland in recent years. As a fitness instructor, Smith became aware of the commercial side of it some time back but only embraced Girevoy in the past 24 months or so.
Believe it or not, this is the first sport – bar a brief foray into the white collar kickboxing ring to raise money for the Galway Rape Crisis Centre – Smith has committed to. Growing up in Kilbeacanty and going to secondary school in the Convent of Mercy in Gort, she notes that once you weren’t picked for the camogie team, there was little else of a sporting nature to do in the area.
“So, I never did anything really. I was a complete dosser, a tearaway . . . smoked . . . drank . . . lads!” she laughs. “In fact, I think my parents are shocked with my transformation now.”
Yet for all this, Smith had a good work ethic borne, she says, from “a very humble background”. As a teenager she worked in her parents’ health food stores – Open Sesame Health Foods – in Gort and Ennis and when she left school at 17, she got a management position in Evergreen. “So, health was always around me.”
Four years later, she set up her own aromatherapy store in Eyre Square Centre, called Bliss, selling vitamins, herbs, incense and her own range of skincare products. “I had my own logo and I had my own brand and all that.” Her endeavours were recognised by a feature in Woman’s Way magazine and she was also selected as a finalist of the BPW Young Businesswoman of the Year in 2002.
However, three years on, she yearned for a new challenge and her mum Sally suggested she do a course in fitness. This she did, completing the National Certificate in Exercise and Fitness in Dublin before leaving for Australia where she both managed a health food store and worked in a fitness studio.
“I really got great experience over there but I also had to up-skill. They wouldn’t recognise my qualification so I actually had to spend my backpacking money on re-qualifying. To do this, I had to find people to do a [fitness] video but I didn’t know one person. I did get them, though, and Igot the qualification from the Australian Institute of Sport. They have a very high standard and they are really ahead of everyone else, even more so than the Americans.”
When she returned home in 2005, she subsequently worked in NRG gym in Bohermore and, briefly, in Olympic Physique in Ballybane before NUI Galway’s Clubs and Recreational Officer, Kathy Hynes, took Smith under her wing and encouraged her to pursue various courses in a variety of sporting disciplines.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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