Bann hit the medal trail at Irish Championships

Bann Rowing Club recently travelled to Cork to compete in the 2013 Irish Rowing Championships and came away with plenty of medals.

For the first time Bann were competing in the womens junior 18 eights and the womens novice eights. Brega Mullan, Beth Montgomery, Hannah Scott, Katie Shirlow, Naomi Wray, Erin Barry, Rebecca Meenagh, Francesca Morelli and cox Ellie Earl were all, with the exception of Erin Barry, competing at the Championships for the first time.

The womens junior eights event was a straight final with Cork BC, Shandon BC, Shannon BC and the two in form crews of Portora and Galway BC. All crews got off well from the start and reigning champions Galway started to ease out a slight lead by the 500m mark. Bann were locked in a battle with Portora while the others were starting to fall off the pace. Coming into the finish Galway had pulled away to one length of clear water and Portora had just managed to move out to half length lead over Bann who were pushing hard again but were unable to pull Portora back.

Bronze medals is a great result for the young Bann crew given their improvement and fighting spirit to finish so close to both Portora and Galway.

In the womens novice eights event the same Bann girls raced and won their heat in style. This qualified them for the final against older crews where Queens got off the start well. In an exciting race Bann started a push to pull the Queens boat back, they pushed them all the way to win silver.

The club were also represented in the mens senior and intermediate pairs by James McAfee and Conor Logan. In the senior event the Bann pair found the pace to high and finished fifth in the heat so did not proceed to the final. They qualified for the intermediate final and won bronze.

The women’s pair of Emily Hutchinson and Brook Edgar were competing in the intermediate and senior events. In the heat of the intermediate pairs Trinity and UCD secured first and second which left Bann and Commercial BC fighting it out for the last qualifying spot, but Commercial managed to stay ahead and pipped Bann by 0.7 of a second to secure third place. In Sunday’s Senior final the girls finished fifth.