July marks a month of All Ireland competitions for our Juvenile and F4Y athletes. It’s an incredibly busy month with nearly every weekend taken up with National competition at one age or another.
Yesterday Sunday July 3rd was the start of the National finals with the All Ireland Children’s Games taking part in Tullamore. This was the All Ireland competition for our under 9 to under 11 competitors. A slightly depleted team of qualifiers made the journey to Co Offaly with some of our athletes unavailable to travel due to holidays.
On the day Dunboyne AC had one boys under 11 4 x 100m relay team competing while we also had one under 11 boys 600m Pair in action. Mathieu Kieffer, Jed Collins, Ciaran McCormack, Dillon Ryan and Darragh Harrison made up the relay squad and arrived armed with a Leinster Bronze medal in their pockets – their qualification ticket to these All Ireland’s. Mathieu Kieffer and Ciaran McCormack were double jobbing as they were our representatives in the 600m pairs competition. They qualified as Leinster Silver medallists a few weeks earlier.
Nerves were very evident as the boys arrived. However the sight, on the front cover of the glossy colour programme, of a straining Conor Leane lunging for the line in his Dunboyne AC singlet as he won his All Ireland indoor Gold earlier this year put a smile on the faces of the boys as the nerves quickly subsided as the warm ups began.
Ciaran and Mathieu were up first for their 600m races. The competition as you would expect for an All Ireland was at an extremely high level. As with all the National competitions this month everyone competing had to quality from their own provincial Championships. As super-fast times were being run in the races beforehand at under 9 and 10 level, the boys knew they would need to run as fast as they have ever run before to be competitive here. As with the Leinster Pairs, the combined time of 2 runners is used to calculate finishing positions.
Ciaran was up first and as per his usual running style went out positively. He eased to the front after 250m and kept up a strong pace until challenged at 400m. He dug deep as two athletes passed him in the last 200 but closed back up again with a strong kick down the home straight to finish a very strong 3rd place in a PB time and well ahead of the remainder of the field, which was important. Mathieu was up next and started more conservatively but threaded his way through the field to be in 6th position with 150m to run. Mathieu is always a very strong finisher and has a great weapon of a withering kick at the end of his races and indeed we saw this to great effect as he kicked hard for the last 120m getting up to also grab a 3rd place finish right on the line in an almost identical time to Ciaran. Then it was down to the times and after a long agonising wait the news came through that the boys were All Ireland Silver medal winners. Cue great celebrations and a fantastic highlight to a brilliant season for these boys. Their talent and indeed the work they put in all year from cross country to track has been a testament to them. This National medal was a fitting reward for their efforts and was richly deserved.
Not long after their efforts in the 600m the two boys joined Jed, Dillon and Darragh for their relay semi-final. There were 2 semi-finals here. The first 3 to qualify plus the 2 fastest losers would determine the final 8. Unluckily the boys were drawn in heat 2. A loaded heat, with the winners of last years All Ireland plus the Munster Champions plus another of the pre-race favourites all in the same race. This was going to be incredibly tough. The first semi was won in a time which was not remarkable so the feeling was that the fastest losers would emerge from our boys heat. As the race unfolded the change overs were efficient and we were in the mix for a qualification but it was extremely tight all the way around. In a blanket finish it was hard to determine finishing places. We knew we were just outside the first 3 automatic places but the next 3 places were hard to determine and a photo finish was needed. Another agonising wait until we got the bad news that the boys missed out by a tenth of a second. It was a bit of a disappointing end for these talented boys who put a huge amount of extra training into this effort. The positives to be taken were that they ran a faster time then when winning Bronze in the Leinester’s but the frustrating thing was that their time was faster than 3 of the automatic qualifiers from the first heat. But that’s championship racing and the luck of the draw. The boys ran their hearts out and should be very proud of themselves, their coaches certainly are.
So overall an extremely positive day for Dunboyne AC as once again our athletes delivered medals at the National stage. Here’s hoping this sets a trend now for our remaining All Ireland competitors over the next few weeks.
The coaches would like to thank all the parents who travelled on Sunday and for their support over the season. They would also like to thank all five boys who can now get a well-earned break before cross country training commences in August.
