Irish Indoor Age Groups 21-22 March 2014
Mon 24 March 2014--admin
A group of 18 CoLAC athletes travelled to the fantastic facility at AIT for the Irish Indoor Championships at the weekend and what a very successful time they had.
The weekend was kicked off with the 60m Sprints and our first athlete involved was Anna McCauley who ran a fantastic PB of 8.16s in the final of the U14 event to place 4th, just 0.02s away from the medals. Next to run was Kate Farrelly who also set new figures with her 8.34s heat time in the U17 girl’s race. In the boys event in the same age group Ben Fisher ran a PB of 7.38s to reach the final where he finished 7th.
The U18s brought us our first medals of the day with Roseanna McGuckian earning a Gold with her own PB of 8.16s before Ikenna Nzewi recorded an amazing 7.04s PB to pick up the Silver in the boys event, just 0.03s behind the winning time. Our other U18 athlete, Gareth Thompson had to endure the most difficult of circumstances in his event when some terrible clerical error caused the wrong line up to be posted for the final. Certainly not Athletics Ireland’s finest hour. Gareth of course dealt with the whole fiasco in a manner which ensured he was the one who emerged from the debacle well.
Our final athlete on the track on Saturday was Rebekah Douglas in the U16 1500m who ran well to finish in that most frustrating of places, 4th.
In the field events we had a mixture of Shot, Long Jump and High Jump occurring, sometimes simultaneously. This was the case for Sarah Woods who dashed from sand to circle many times, each requiring a change of footwear. I am sure the distance she covered between the 2 was further than some of our track athletes and she could not have been able to give her very best to either, but finished a very creditable 8th in the Shot.
The Galbraith sisters were also competing in the Shot and both managed 7th place, Alix in the U16s and Hollie in the U13s where she threw a new PB of 8.47m.
Meanwhile in the High Jump we had the 3 Annas involved. First up was Anna McIlmoyle who took another of those frustrating 4th places in the U19s. She was followed by Anna McCauley who exceeded her PB by 10cms to clear 1.53m to lift the Silver medal in the thrilling U14 event. Our 3rd Anna, Stanfield, equalled her PB of 1.50m in the U15 event to finish 5th in another excellent competition.
Anna Stanfield was back in action in the Long Jump reaching the final with a jump close to her PB to finish 7th in the U15s before Ben Fisher added another Gold to the CoLAC tally in the U17s, despite the 2 hour wait for the event to start, to bring the first day of competition to a very successful end for the club.
The track events on Sunday got underway with 5 of our athletes involved in the hurdles. Every one of them reached their final starting with young Hollie Mulholland who ran a huge PB of 10.34s in the U14 race to finish 5th. In the U15s Bradley Mulholland ran a PB of 9.31s to reach the final but managed to sustain an injury which limited him in the final where he still was only 0.03s outside the medals. Clearly that “thicker vest” prescribed after Magherafelt has not yet arrived!
In the U16s Alix ran close to her PB on her way to the final despite having to go straight to the start line from the High Jump . In the U17s Ben suffered from being triggered to rise early from his blocks by movement from another athlete in the first attempt to run the race. Although the starters correctly warned the offending athlete with no blame attached to Ben, he was sufficiently shaken to sit back in the blocks when the race did get underway and despite his PB of 8.80s he could only force his way back to another of those agonising 4th places.
Kate Farrelly in the U17 girls event ran the race of her life to lift the Bronze taking over a fifth of a second off her PB in the process
On the circular track Gareth was unlucky that his second place in his heat was not quite enough to qualify for the final of the 200m with only six spots available from 4 heats.
In the 800m events we were represented by our U14 Amie Bradley who was running on a banked track for the first time and very narrowly missed qualifying for the final. Jake Harbinson ran in the U16 event and took over 3.5s off his PB to finish second and lift yet another Silver medal for CoLAC.
Sunday’s field events got underway with Anna McCauley back in action in the Long Jump where she achieved yet another PB of 4.56m to finish 6th while the injured Bradley was unable to jump at his best but was still only 4cms off making the final.
Over in the High Jump area, Alix, despite the clash with her hurdles, still managed to jump to an excellent Silver medal in the U16 event . Next up was Robbie Marrs in the U16 competition which he won with a final height of 1.81m. Phoebe Tan equalled her PB of 1.65m to earn another CoLAC Silver medal in the U17 girls event with Sarah finishing 8th in the same competition to bring the weekend to a close.
So many excellent performances from our juniors yet again despite a timetable which seemed designed to make it almost impossible to predict when most events might start.
Well done to all the athletes, coaches and friends and family who made the long journey.
Pictures from the meeting are here-
http://www.cityoflisburnac.co.uk/gallery/2014-2/irish-indoor-championships/