Oak Athletic starts growing

The club has been set up by fully I.F.A. qualified coaches who have plenty of experience of coaching youth football within the city for quite a number of years.

Having only started six months ago the club has already been successful in a number of competitions.

A few weeks ago on a sunny Friday evening at the Coleraine Showgrounds, the young U10 Squad managed by Joe Kelly with coach Mark Doherty took on the Coleraine Academy in the final of the North West Coleraine Cup.

On what started out as a tense and nervous night turned out to be one of the best games of football seen at under 10 level.

In front of a crowd of 400 people, the young Oak Athletic boys did the city proud as they returned home with the North West Coleraine League Cup after emerging victorious after a penalty shoot out. The game itself finished 2-2 after extra time and it was end to end from start to finish. Oak Athletic went one up then Coleraine came back to lead 2-1 right until five minutes remaining when the young Oak Athletic boys never gave up and equalised to make it 2-2 and this is how it stayed. With penalities being a lottery the young Oak Athletic boys kept their cool to score all penalties with Coleraine missing two. The first trophy for the club was lifted by their captain Shea Fraser.

On top of the success on Friday night, the weekend got a whole lot better for our young club.

On Saturday, the Andrew Eakin Memorial Trophy took place again up at the Coleraine Showgrounds with teams from the North West area competing against of backdrop of around 500 supporters. 12 teams competing at Under 8 and 15 teams at Under 11.

The club had two teams at under 8 level managed by Jim Maguire/Mark Canning and two teams at under 11 managed by Dermot Hillen and Mark Wray competing with the outcome of all teams being unbelievable.

At the under 8 age group both teams did fantastic in their group games and ended up making it to the semi final where they had to meet each other and unfortunately only one could make it through. In the final itself, the young Oak Athletic boys & girls gave everything they had and played the great football that got them to the final but eventually they lost out narrowly to a last minute goal from Ballymoney United.

The under 11 group went one better and after making it the whole way to the final beating teams in the calibre of Coleraine (2-1), Limavady United (2-0), Magherafelt Sky Blues (2-0) and Ballymoney United (4-1) along the way, the young squad where victorious in what was a great game of football played in great spirits against Coleraine Alexander.

As in most finals players were a little nervous to start but after 5 minutes the game settled and Oak Athletic got into their passing game and took control of the match.

In what was a tight game the first goal was always going to make the difference and this is exactly what happened and thankfully that goal was scored by Oak Athletic through Odhran Hillen and then with a few minutes left on the clock, Caolon McLaughlin wrapped the game up with a fine strike to make it 2-0 at the final whistle. All that was left was for Mark Wray to lift yet another trophy for this young club. Two trophies in as many days.

The day was rounded off by an awards ceremony which saw young Sean Carlin pick up the award for under 8 player of the tournament and Caolon McLaughlin from the under 11 squad picking up Player of the tournament at his age level.