The club had an excellent first day of the Leinster Championships with great performances at individual and team level.

The club picked up four individual medals with Rebecca Kennedy and MaryEllen Doyle claiming silver medals. Both girls ran very strong races and gained ground in the second half of their respective races. MaryEllen wisely started cautiously before picking up the pace and moving through the field, whilst Rebecca moved into second place after the first km and was gaining on the Mullingar athlete ahead to the finish.

The u12′s set a high standard from the off, Ruth Kennedy and David O’Carroll taking 4th places in their races.  The boys u14 stepped up to the distance and ran well over heavy ground with Thomas, Adam and Paul all finishing strongly; their efforts were matched by the u14 girls with the two Aoife’s finishing in 23rd and 52nd.  The boys u16 team were lead home by Conor O’Carroll who ran a cracker of a race to finish 14th, with Sean, Evan, Finn and Marcus all running well behind him – this team has real potential for the future.

A smaller field in the u18 boys meant that the pace was quick from the start and Seppi and Leon showed great strength to finish in 34th and 40th place.

Joanna Morrissey added to her medal collection by picking up a gold county medal with Kilkenny as the fourth finisher on her team in 20th place and Bella Lysaght ran really well again to finish 34th in her race.

The novice women were one shy of a team; but as ever Anne Doyle put in a great performance to finish well up the field. Ciara and Leona made their Leinster debuts at novice XC level and both performed well  – showing great strength and determination to hold their positions and gain places in the latter half of the race.

In the men’s race Mick O’Neill claimed a bronze medal in his age category, with Denis, Marty and Simon also running well.

Boys  
U12
David O’Carroll 4th
U14
Thomas Bric   49th
Adam Ronan 62nd
Paul Lyaght    74th
U16
Conor O’Carroll 14th
Sean O’Neill 27th
Evan Foley 47th
Finn Connolly 56th
Marcus Hogan 57th
U18
Bella Lysaght 34th
Leon Gordon 40th

Girls
U12
Ruth Kennedy 4th

U14
Aoife Carroll  23rd
Aoife Naddy 52nd
U16
Rebecca Kennedy 2nd
Bella Lysaght 43rd
U18
Mary Ellen Doyle 2nd   (Gold County Team)
Joanna Morrissey 20th (Gold County Team)

Novice Women
Anne Doyle 42nd
Ciara Farrell 56th
Leona Connolly 59th

Novice Men
Simon O’Dwyer  30th

Masters Men
Denis McCormack  (o45) 32nd
Marty Kelly (o55) 9th
Michael Hogan (o60) 3rd

results to follow.

The club are hoping senior and juvenile teams will kick off the xc country season at Adamstown. Please contact Liam or Denis for further details.

Sophie Parksinson has been chosen to represent Ireland on Aviva Irish Schools Girls team in both the shot put and discuss at the  Aviva SIAB Schools’ International in  Cardiff on the 16th July 2011.  The complete team list is available here

Day two of the All Ireland Juvenile National Track and Field Championships saw Gowran athletes pick up two more medals. Sophie Parkinson continued her recent rich vein of form taking the national title in the u18 age group with a throw of 38m 35cm.   Aoife Naddy, competing in the u14 girls high jump – set a PB to take the bronze medal with a jump of 1m 45m.

Day 1 provisional results to download here

Day 2, provisional results to download  here

Sophie Parkison on her way to All Ireland Gold in the u18 discus

Gowran AC trio Tommy Evans,  Kevin Fenlon and Simon O’Dwyer took the top 3 spots in the taxback 10k road race today.  Organised by Kilkenny based company Taxback, and run in aid of the ISPCC, the event was held in warm sunshine and had a friendly and relaxed atmosphere.

The start of the race was a little chaotic and caught a few runners by surprise, but soon enough order was restored and Tommy showed his class by stretching into a comfortable lead within the first mile.  Behind Tommy, local trio of Kevin, Simon and Ed Maloney (KCH) ran closely together for the final 6k of the race, and coming round the final corner were neck and neck. As they kicked for home, Kevin proved the strongest, followed by Simon and Ed. DSD runner, Linda Byrne, had a good run to win the women’s race.

Disappointingly,  the race was well short of the advertised 10km; measuring under 6miles. The first and last kilometer were short by 100m and the 8th short by over 200m.  It’s a hard to see the purpose of chip timing when the course is so short. Whilst the route is  a well established one in the Kilkenny road racing scene, offering easy accessibility and good parking – its needs some amendments to make it a valid 10k route.

However, short course  aside, it was great to see runners come together to raise over  €5,000 for the ISPCC.

The recent County Championship 10k run that finished behind Woodies was accurately measured to the full 10km, but surprisingly the testing hill between 7 and 8 kilometers was not that popular!

Gowran had two representatives in the All Ireland National Juvenile Track and Field Championships in Tullamore on Saturday the 9th of July.

Ted Drea won Gold in the boys u13 high jump. Ted showed great drive, determination and technical ability to set a new PB of 1m 43cm – eclipsing his previous best of 1m 35cm set in the Leinste Championships this year. Starting at 1m 20cm,  Ted cleared 6 heights in total,  and while he took 3 attempts to clear 1m 35cm and 1m 40cm,  he was the only jumper to clear 1m 43cm – doing so at his first attempt!  It was great to see the hard work that Ted, under the guidance of Liam and John, has put in recently paying off.

Christine O’Donnell competing in the girl’s u14  60m hurdles ran a superb heat to finish 2nd.  She was unlucky in the final, striking the second hurdle but ran on strongly to finish 7th in a time of 12:52

ALL-IRELAND BRONZE FOR EVE AND SARAH

u9 300m Pairs All Ireland Bronze Medal Winners

Our Girls u9 Team of Eve O’Dwyer and Sarah O’Donnell turned in a tremendous performance to win the Bronze Medals in the 300m Pairs All-Ireland Championships in Templemore on Saturday 25^th June.  Eleven Teams took part in the event and two races were required with the combined times of both to decide the overall result. Sarah ran the 1^st race and finished in a time of 60.56secs.  Eve had a storming run in the 2^nd race and finished 1^st in a time of 57.09secs.  The combined time of 1m 57.65s

saw the team win the Bronze Medals.  The Girls also finished 4^th in the Pairs 60m sprint, Eve ran 10.51s and Sarah ran 10.75s for a combined time of 21.26s.

SILVER FOR SOPHIE

Sophie Parkinson following her success on Saturday in the Tailteann Games was out again on Sunday competing in the All-Ireland  Junior Track & Field Championships in Tullamore.   She won the Silver Medal in the Discus with a throw of 38m 54cm this despite a knee injury which forced her to miss competing in the Shot Putt.

ANOTHER WIN FOR SOPHIE PARKINSON

Sophie Parkinson turned in another top class performance to win the Discus event at the Schools Tailteann Games held in Santry on Saturday 25^th June.  Her winning throw of 40m 28cm won her a place on the Irish Schools team for the International Schools event which takes place in Cardiff Wales on Saturday 16^th July.  She will also compete in the Shot Putt having finished 2nd in the event on Saturday with a Personal Best Putt of 11m 36cm.  Seppi Lysaght was also in action; competing in the Pole Vault he finished in 6^th place with a great leap of 3m 20cm a new Personal Best. Albrecht Plettenberg competing with the Munster Team finished 7^th in the Javelin with a throw of 37m 40.