CONGRATULATIONS to each and every athlete who competed over the recent Track and Field season. It has been a terrific season for our club where we finished in top spot on the medals table on ARCU Rankings. We have 8 National Championship wins including two doubles, with Alana Ryan taking both the 100m & 200m titles U15 and Ben Jones taking the 800m & 1500m titles U14, Amaris Borel taking the 300mH U17, Padraig Lennon the 3K steeplechase U19, Martha Hassett the Pole Vault U18 and newcomer Ben Mooney the 200m U14. Fantastic silver medal performances from Richael Browne in the 800m, Ara Freeman 100m U17 and Padraig Lennon 1500m U19, and bronze for our other newcomer Josh Pyper in the 200m U14.

The Girls U 17 team Alannah O’Carroll, Amaris Borel, Ara Freeman & Richael Browne took the bronze medals in the National Relays and Ara & Amaris were joined by Aoife Conroy & Isobel Kenny on the junior team to win the silver medals.

The pairs event saw Daniel Quirk & Rory McNally win gold in the 60m U9 and Ailbhe Gordon & Ava Foley  win bronze in the Turbo Javelin U9.

We had a great day at the National ‘B’ Championships, when we brought home a barrow load of medals: U12: Michael O'Shea gold in 60m & silver in Long Jump (LJ), Ellen McNally gold in LJ, Emma Quirk silver in 60m, Erin Howard 4th in High Jump (HJ), Liam Phibbs 5th in 600m. U13: Aodhan Daly gold in 80m & LJ, Ronan Dempsey silver in LJ & bronze in 80m, Alan Gordon gold in HJ & silver in Shot Putt (SP) U14: Sarah O'Connor gold in 800m, Katie Lawless 4th in 800m, U15: Troy Scully silver in 800m & HJ, Rachel Purcell silver in SP, Catherine Casey bronze in HJ & 4th in LJ, Rachel Casey 4th in SP. Niamh Conroy 4th in 100m.

A fantastic win for Amaris Borel in the schools 300mH saw her get her first Irish Vest this summer. Amaris went on to produce an outstanding performance in Wales to win the International event.

We ended the season with 3 of our athletes, Richael Browne, Ara Freeman & Alana Ryan, getting selected as members of the Irish Developmental Squad for the Celtic Games, giving them their first taste of International competition also.

Many of our older athletes were members of the Slí Cualann teams who competed in the League again this year. this year it was the girls team who made the final and had a fantastic competition on the day, missing out on the bronze medals by half a point and the silver by one point. Well done to club members Amaris Borel, Aoife Conroy, Ara Freeman, Carol Costello, Connie Thiel, Isobel Kenny, Isobel O’Grady, Katy Conroy, Martha Hassett and their team mates Claire Earls, Denise O’Shea and Laura Kavanagh.

We congratulate and thank all of our coaches who worked so hard and committed so much time and energy to helping our athletes with their achievments. We also thank them and all of the parents for the many long days spent at various track throughout the season supporting all of our athletes so well. At least they were mostly nice sunny days this year!

RETURN TO TRAINING
All groups return to training on Tues Sept 2nd . With such a short time from our return date until the Cross Country (XC) season starts, it is crucial that athletes who intend to compete start getting fit ahead of our return. This is easily achieved by doing short runs every other day and gradually increasing the time over the next couple of weeks. Start with 10 mins every second day this week and gradually increase this to15mins next week. This will help you to return ‘fit to train’ so that we don’t have to spend these few precious weeks of training just getting fit.

VERY IMPORTANT
While the 5-6pm & 6-7pm groups finished training on Tuesday 31st June, the 7-8.30pm groups continued right through July and into early August. However many of the members of these groups have not been seen since long before this date. As we are now trying to organise the training groups for our return in Sept, we are asking that all athletes, who have not attended for a prolonged period of time, but who wish to return to training, would TEXT US on 0877730000 ASAP, otherwise we will not have a place for you in Sept. As well as trying to find spaces to move athletes up the groups, we also have long lists of people in most age groups waiting to join the club.

ATTENDANCE TRIP
With so much happening throughout the summer, we didn’t get a chance to organise the Day Trip for those who have an average of 60% attendance from Sept to June. We are now in the process of organising this event for early Sept. Details of the trip and a list of those who are eligible to attend will be sent out by newsletter and also posted on our website over the next couple of days. Those who are eligible will need to let us know if they are coming asap, so that we can confirm numbers. As numbers are large we will be dividing the athletes (by age group) into two different trips this year

2013 AWARDS
We didn’t get around to organising our 2013 awards night either this year. We are also working on this during our short break and hope to hold it during Sept. as well. Please note that this will be for ‘Attendance, Attitude, Achievement’ during 2013 only and will not include the Indoors last Spring or the recent T&F. These will count towards the 2014 awards.

ADULT RUNNING
Adult sessions continue to take place on Mon/Wed at  6pm & again at 8.30pm & also Wed/Fri at 10am.  All these are run in conjunction with Shoreline Sports Park, so you don’t have to be a club member. Our road run also continues on Tues evenings at 7.15pm and again we would hope to see lots of additional runners coming along to join the group. This one is for club members, as is the Sunday morning run, but you are welcome to come along for a trial session before joining.