Athletes enjoy good outings ahead of District Schools finals
Editorial Department • Published 2 Feb 2012 13:00
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As the road to Galway and the All-Ireland schools cross-country finals on March 10 gets underway in earnest this week with the Aviva District Schools finals in Dungannon, St Michael's College have been busy getting some competitive experience under their belts with outings at the DCU schools invitational in Dublin and the Antrim International cross-country events in the past week.
Two very different courses from the flat carpet of the DCU playing fields to the deep sticky mud of the Greenmount Agricultural College, saw some good individual and team performances, the best of which was the victory of the U17 team in Dublin with a solid display from the scoring quartet of Ruairi Maguire, Adam Breen, Garbhan Jones and Mark McCaffrey.
A disappointing display by the minor team saw only Ryan Flanagan and first year James Boyle display anything near their real talents, an appalling start putting paid to the squad's chances of any colour of team medal, while Niall Hoy lead home the junior squad and Denis Green was best of the seniors who took third in a close team battle.
Seventy-two hours later in very different conditions in Antrim there were good runs from Flanagan and Tiarnan Bogue while Pierce Connolly was the top U15 and Ruairi Maguire lead home the U17 squad.
St. Michael's are defending a five year unbeaten record across all the age groups at the District championship but will expect to come under severe pressure in the junior boys from St. Pat's Cavan and some of the Donegal schools and in the intermediates from Devenish College who were very strong at last week's Fermanagh schools, while in the senior section the loss of defending District champion and last year's All-Ireland schools eighth placer Finn Corrigan, with an achillies injury, could open the door for Integrated College, Dungannon.
Other Fermanagh athletes who should feature will include Craig Johnson of Devenish who should take the Inter boys gold as should Ryan Davidson of Portora in the senior boys and Edel Monaghan of Mount Lourdes in the minor girls while Mount Lourdes, Portora and Devenish College should also be in the hunt for team medals.
This article appeared in Impartial Reporter 02 Feb 12
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