The Galway indoor championships took place in the TUS Athlone indoor arena over 2 days on the 10th and 11th of February. Saturday’s competition incorporated the U13-U19 events, plus all walks and Sunday was for the U9-U12 Athletes.
Day 1
The older juveniles were up first on Saturday with 8 Athletes making the short trip from Athenry to Athlone.
The first event of the day was the 60m Hurdles where we had Isobel O’Dea in her first competition for the club, having only joined at the end of last year, trying hurdles for the first time at U13 and finishing 6th in her heat.
Jennifer Greaney was next up in the U14 G 60m hurdles. Jennifer has worked hard on her block starts and this showed as she flew out of the blocks to the first hurdle, safely cleared the 5 barriers and battled her way to a silver medal with a time of 11.02 sec in a tight finish.
The relays are always a great source of excitement and noise, especially in an indoor setting, and this competition was no different. Our newly formed U13 boys relay team of Harry Melia, Leon Boyko, Noah Brady(U12), and Charlie Flannery(U12) were wonderful across all 4 legs with a heroic anchor leg from Harry Melia to make up a 5+ metre deficit at the changeover to win their heat in a club record time of 2:02.53 and take the silver medal. The 2nd place finish was made more impressive by the fact the Charlie and Noah had stepped up from U12’s to make up the team.
The walks are a relatively new event for our club with increasing interest especially with some recent successes from our athletes. Galway is lucky enough to have top race-walking coach Pierce O’Callaghan willing to offer coaching to all athletes and we are seeing the benefits of this. Owen Gannon has been one such athlete that has benefited and he was rewarded with 2nd place, and a club record, in a close U12 1KM race just 3 seconds behind the winner Dylan Madden from Castlegar.
Isobel O’Dea is a complete newcomer to race walking but that didn’t phase her as she looked like a natural on her way to setting a new club record and taking the bronze in the U13 1KM race.
Switching to the short track, normally a middle-distance runner, Harry Melia took gold in the U13 60m in 8.82 seconds. Leon Boyko had a great 60m heat finishing 2nd in a great time of 9.24, to leave him 7th overall from a field of 30.
Isobel(U13) and Jennifer(U14) also ran in the 60m heats with Isobel finishing in 28th position overall and Jennifer finishing off her day in 7th overall.
Leon and Harry ran in separate heats of the U13 Boys 600m against some top middle-distance runners. Harry knew he needed to attack the race and won the heat in 1:44.3, just ahead of the GCH’s Darcy Noel who ran 1:44.7. Then the agonising wait for heat 2. Despite being a relative newcomer to athletics Leon Boyko was impressive as he navigated the indoor loop 3 times and won the heat in 1:54.4, just 3 seconds off bronze, and meaning Harry took gold. Definitely more to come from this young man on the track.
Switching to the field we had Harry and Leon in U13 Long Jump with a big field of 27. With very little separating the top 8 athletes, Harry cleared all 3 jumps and took silver with his last jump of 4.01m. Leon also cleared all 3 jumps to finish in 8th place with best of 3.58m.
A very successful day for the club overall, setting down a marker for the year.