Ballymore Cobh AC News

Building on the solid foundations laid during the previous year, 2015 proved to be another hugely positive period for Ballymore Cobh AC.

At both senior and underage level, the clubs membership grew exponentially, leading the adult section to now rank as the largest of its kind in the county of Cork with the junior setup amongst the top five largest in the region.

As the athlete numbers have swelled so to has the influx of new and enthusiastic coaches whose selfless contribution of time and effort should not go without mention.

They say quantity yields quality and there was no shortage of polished performances throughout the season with the highlights including an age category Silver Medal in the team standings of the National Marathon Championship for our trio of Sonia O’Sullivan, Orla O’Rourke and Kathryn Carruthers. Sonia picked up a Silver Medal also in her age category with Kathryn also securing Bronze Medal in her age group.

The autumn marathon season was also fruitful for Trevor Cummins who achieved the much sought after sub-three hour time with his performance in Amsterdam.

Closer to home, there was a Gold Medal winning performance from our Women’s Senior Team in the East Cork Cross-Country Championships with Jennifer Goggin leading home the victorious team with an individual Senior Women’s Gold Medal. Joining Jennifer on the podium were Orla O’Rourke, Una French, Angela Leahy, Alma Worrall and Ruth Phelan.

Ruth also deserves individual recognition courtesy of her age category Bronze Medal secured at the Cork Cross-Country Championships.

While the above mentioned stand-out performances have certainly lit up the season, our Fit4Life program continues to be of equal success with a steady flow of beginners continuing to join the club through the Beginner to 5k Groups led by Kevin Jones and his team of helpers.

Meanwhile at underage level, the standard of performance raised to another level over the last twelve months with particular mention going to the efforts of Maggie Sillett (Cross-Country) and Marc Jones (Track) who both won medals at provincial level when partaking in the Munster Championships.

Our Cross-Country teams received U9 Boys Bronze, U13 Girls Gold and U13 Boys Bronze during a hugely memorable day at the East Corks Cross-Country Finals where Tomasz Krawczyk won a Gold Medal in the Boys U17 event and Sophie O’Sullivan also took Gold in the Girls U16 race.

Juvenile success continued at county level where the U13 Girls won Silver while the U9s Boys secured another county team medal with Maggie Sillett also registering an individual 4th-place County Medal on the day.

We are very proud of all our Little Athletes who have trained enthusiastically throughout the year. The club’s Little Athletics programme introduces children aged between 4 and 9 to athletics in a fun and non competitive way, but it does give them a taste of what it is like to compete. A gentle introduction to competition usually starts at U8. Little Athletes relay team of Darragh Boyd, Sam Ryan, Thomas Devery and Sam Dorgan placed second at East Cork Championships at CIT in April.

Little Athletes also did very well in boys U9 cross country events with Jake Doody, Ryan McCormick, Austin Tayoro, Sam Dorgan, Darragh Boyd and Roan Fallon gaining team medals. Aine Sheridan put in excellent performances in a number of U9 cross country events.