National Medals for Juveniles

A number of our juveniles secured Inter County medals on Sunday last after they competed for Dublin and the club in the National Juvenile Even age Cross Country Championships in Sligo.

The championships which were held on the Sligo racecourse provided a great opportunity for the young athletes to compete against the qualifiers from the other Counties and Regions. Although the rain ceased just after the start of the first race the underfoot conditions were extremely heavy in places after some heavy rain over the preceding days made the going tougher throughout the well laid out but tough course which included a testing uphill climb to the finish.

However, Grace Dervan coped very well in the conditions and was the 4th scoring member of Dublin team which won the Inter County bronze medals after she was 39th of the 143 finishers in the U12 2000m race. Nadine Johnston Hickey was next to finish, followed by Eve Keegan, Alana lsh, Claudia Kavanagh and Destiny Ikepefua who all did well,

A few more medals were secured in the boys U12 race, over the same distance after Seamus Noone and Christopher Duffy finished 24th and 28th respectively and helped Dublin take the Inter County Bronze medals. They were followed home by Kevin Lahiffe, Jack Gill, Jack Cleary and Nazim Kourrini who all competed well on the day.

In the U14 boys 3000m race Mustaffe Nasir who was contesting his first ever National cross country Championships was placed third throughout most of the contest until the final climb to the finish when he drifted back to finish 14th of the 109 runners, but his position was good enough to help the Capital take the Inter County Gold medals. Cathal Dervan and Mustaffe’s younger brother Sadiq who were both stepping up in age finished 67th and 77th respectively.

Conor Murray finished a good 34th of the 113 finishers in the U16 400m race whilst Joseph Lyons who was conceding a year finished strongly in 86th.

In the Senior 1000m contest Anthony Lieghio who had travelled across the Atlantic from College a few days earlier in hope of qualifying for the European U23 team was our only representative, but despite missing out on the qualifying places he too had a good race finishing 31st of the 116 finishers in a time of 35.42 in his first Senior Cross Country outing.

Our juveniles will be looking forward to the Uneven age Championships in the Curragh on 11th December where we will have teams in the U13 boys and girls and U17 boys races with many of them also representing Dublin on the Inter County & Regional teams.