Medals galore forSpartan youngsters

IT was yet another rewarding weekend for local athletics with nine medals garnered by City of Derry Spartans athletes from the National Juvenile track and field championships in Tullamore.
By The Newsroom
Published 19th Jul 2012, 12:11 BST

Shane McGowan in the Boys U17 800m and Claire Dougherty in the U18 Girls Triple Jump were crowned national club champions in their respective age group events while silver medals went to Naomi Morgan and Mark McGarvey with bronzes won by Jenny O’Brien, Ciara Armstrong, Connor Breslin, Ryan McParland and Ruadhri O’Neill.

There were also a few near misses and good performances all round as young athletes from the Spartans and Olympian did themselves proud at the top quality Juvenile championships over the weekend, emphassing once again the high standards of local athletics. Claire Dougherty claimed the first local gold on Saturday when she got out to 10m 83cm to convincingly win the U18 Girls Triple Jump and on Sunday Shane McGowan broke the two minute barrier yet again as he confidently took the Boys U17 800m title. Both Spartans were always medal prospects and confirmed their their current good form in advance of this weekends trip to Ashford in Kent with the Irish Schools squad for the annual Schools International challange.

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A well deserved bronze went to the improving Connor Breslin as he posted 2 minutes and 04 seconds behind Shane to notch his maiden national track medal and he will have thoroughly enjoyed his visit to the podium in Tullamore. Naomi Morgan continued to impress with a 5m 17cm leap for silver in the U17 Girls Long Jump and Mark McGarvey made up for missing out on an 100m flat medal by posting 15.49 seconds for the runners up spot in the U19 Boys 110m Hurdles.

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At U18 level Ryan McParland claimed a bronze in the sprint hurdles with 16.32 seconds Ruadhri O’Neill did the same in the U17 Boys 300m Hurdles with 41.82 seconds; Jenny O’Brien won bronze in her U18 Girls 400m Hurdles, her 68.33 seconds narrowly missing out on silver and just getting her home ahead of another Spartan Emma McCay who clocked 69 minutes and 24 seconds in fourth and the final medal, a 100m bronze, came courtesy of Ciara Armstrong with a 12.72 seconds run in the Girls U17 sprint.

Shane, Claire, Ciara and Jenny are all on the Irish team for this Saturday’s Schools International in Kent, where they will take on the best English, Scots and Welsh schools talent, good luck to them and all their Irish team mates.

As already mentioned there were a few near misses for locals with Emma McCay getting close, as did two other hurdlers, Andrew Bolster in the U18 Boys 400 Hurdles and Ruadhri O’Neill in the U17 sprint hurdles.Both were literally within inches of a medal. Naomi Morgan too placed fourth in her U17 sprint hurdles final as did Ryan McParland in the U18 Boys 1oom flat. Olympian’s Sean McIntyre was another who came close, in a very tight Boys U12 600m his sixth place finish was right up with the medallists. Well done to everyone who carried the flag brilliantly for the North West.