The Christmas Morning Run which is unsurprisingly held on Christmas Morning at 11 is extremely popular and is as big a highlight for the young athletes as it is for the ancient coach . Throw a few euro into Tony Hassett's collection bucket for Nenagh day care center and you will be entered in a draw for spot prizes. Speaking of which all spot prize donations will be gratefully accepted on the day or to Tony or Anne Hassett personally.
On behalf of the club we wish all our members and supporters a very happy Christmas and a big thank you to Nenagh CBS for use of their grounds by our endurance group. Without an adequate town park to run in our distance runners spend more time in the CBS than they do at home as a lot of them also go to school there. Sometimes in life it is not a great idea to get your hopes up too high. But that's only true when your hopes and dreams are more aspirational than the reality based dreams of our hard working athletes. We finished our track season in July and after an active three week break we started our latest quest of winning an All Ireland club cross country title in September . So here we are a week before Christmas and two weeks ago we won the All Ireland U14 title and this week we got the bronze medals in a highly competitive U15 competition. So to say I'm a happy coach is a slight understatement . Last March the same bunch of boys won an All Ireland schools cross country title . They have since won three county team titles , three Munster club titles and now Cian Hodgins , Tom Walshe , Luke Purcell , Seán Hayes & Jamie Moloney have ended the year as part of a group with Gold and Bronze All Ireland club team medals. Well done boys you deserve all the accolades you receive.
Our U15s were not the only heroes on the day as Ben Walshe and Diarmuid Moloney we're doing their own Superman impressions in the U13 race . Ben brought home 3 medals with a brilliant 8th place finish and also helped Munster win the provincial title and Tipperary the bronze in the county competition. Diarmuid in his first year with the club and as an U12 running out of age was also on the Tipperary team that claimed the bronze medal. Uniquely these two boys both had big brothers on our U15 team namely Tom Walshe and Jamie Moloney. So sibling rivalry is alive and well and both sets of parents will issue a sigh of relief at not having to console either of the boys. Our two senior ladies Ciara Cummins and Aoife Delargy were running with the Tipperary team that finished 5th in the senior race. Ciara finished an excellent 24th and 800m track star Aoife Delargy 44th . Both will be well pleased with their efforts . Training will continue as usual over the Christmas Period with slight changes announced on Facebook and WhatsApp. After the recent weeks high pressure Munster & All Ireland cross country events it was great to get back to the always very enjoyable county cross country relays in Thurles Crokes. It's an event where endurance runners and sprinters team up because the distance is only 500m.
With a lot of rain over the last week it was great to be greeted by a watery sun even if ambient temperature we're low. We had a mixture of experience & newbies out today and they blended brilliantly to bring a lot of joy to all the wonderful parents who travelled to support their Fabulous offspring. Even though our U14 boys of Cian Hodgins , Micheál Moylan , Ben & Tom Walshe took home another title in convincing manner it was the wonderful running of a number of debutants that caught the coaches eye. We're always looking for new talent so from that perspective it was a highly successful day. With Tom Campbell & Donnacha Brown in the boys U10 , Mairead O'Brien in the Girls U12 and Shane Cleary boys U12 all making their relay debut and performing very strongly we can look forward to the upcoming indoor season with great expectation. The boys U10 &12 both finished 2nd as did the girls U12 & mixed U16 teams . All ran extremely well but the boys U14 bringing home the gold finished as our top team of the day . Another noteworthy fact was that all our four U12 girls are underage again next year so I'm predicting a bright future for Lilly Duffy , Anna Paxman, Mairead O'Brien and Emily O'Neill if they stick together as a group. Next week See's the curtain coming down on our domestic club cross country season with the Uneven age All Ireland cross country championships in Navan . We have an U 15 boys team , three U17 girls & two U13 boys. These are all our strongest juvenile cross country runners in one place on the same day do let the fun begin. The club is running trials at training this Thursday 6th December for GIRLS aged 7 to 12 with a view to establishing relay SQUADS for upcoming county & Munster competitions early in new year.
BOYS train as normal and their trials are on the following week, Thursday 13th December. Annual Club Fundraiser Raffle
|
AuthorWeekly Guardian Notes + More Archives
August 2020
Categories |