Cross-Country
At the South Connacht Finals our Minor team ran brilliantly to qualify for the Connacht Finals by finishing third, while the Junior team were runners-up. At the Connacht finals, the minors, short two runners finished a very close fourth while the Juniors improved to become the Connacht Champions for the first time since 2012. In the subsequent All-Ireland final held in Clongowes Wood College in Kildare they finished as the seventh best team in the country.
Back: Evan Francis, Sean Okeke, Wazeer Awotunde, Eahab Raid Front: Adam Condon, Liam Murphy, Luke Flaherty, Dan Carey
Track and Field
The season began in earnest at the South Connacht Finals in early May, held over two days, the younger age groups in Dangan, followed by the older ones in Athlone. The goal of these is, as always to qualify as many athletes as possible for the Connacht finals, so as to give us the best chance of winning in the shield competitions. Once more, we achieved our goal and 38 athletes made their way to Athlone once again for the Connacht finals.
Another long day in Athlone saw the large contingent of Mary’s athletes emerge victorious as the Overall Best Boy’s school for the lucky 13th year in succession, but we had to fight for every single point on a day of excellent athletics. We succeeded in winning the Junior (u-15) best school shield, sharing it on this occasion with Seamount College, while narrowly winning the Intermediate (u-17) shield and also brilliantly recapturing the Senior (u-19) shield that we had lost last year.
Individually there were some great performances from the Mary’s boys with three new Connacht Champions to add to the roll of honour. In the Junior boys event the only winner was John Osifo who took the 100m title with a fantastically determined run. He later matched that effort in the 4 x 100m relay only to find out that we had been disqualified on a changeover technicality . This unfortunately was a forerunner for the highly talented Intermediate 4 X 100m team who also suffered the same fate in the next race, despite winning convincingly. Our other champions on the day came in the hammer events as Richard Lingaitis and James Kebana took the Intermediate and Senior titles respectively.
Other medalists on the day were Diarmuid Davoren (Junior Hammer), Naoise Walsh (Junior Shot Putt), Patrick Nnadi (Inter 100m), Hassan Diarrassouba (Inter 400m Hurdles), Ignas Simanvcius (Inter shot), Solomon Shomefun (Inter Discus), Cyrus Palmer (Inter Javelin), Colm Downes (Senior Hammer), Rykelmy Rodrigues (Senior Javelin), Thabiso Dube (Senior 400m Hurdles) who each took the silver , while bronze medals were won by Fortune Ikbogwe (Minor Shot), the Minor 4 X 100m relay team of Sean Okeke, Richard Grebstels, Ezekial Abiodun and Eahab Raid, Dan Carey (Junior 1200m Walk), Ryan Tierney (Junior Long Jump), Caleb John (Junior Triple Jump), Liam Murphy (Junior Hammer), Dylan Traynor-Canavan (Inter 400m), Kallum Tobin (Inter 400m Hurdles), Adrian Mamali (Inter Triple Jump), Artemiy Vershinin (Inter Hammer) and the senior 4 x 400m relay team of Colm Downes, Ify Asogu, Eamon MacDonnacha and Thabiso Dube.
