Leinster Pairs and u/12 & u/13 T&F 2019 (8th June)
The weather was very mixed on Saturday 8th June in Tullamore where the Leinster Pairs and u/12 and u/13 T&F took place. It was warm in the sun but quite cold when the clouds came over, and heavy black clouds were never far away but thankfully, the rain held off for most of the day and there were only two brief showers, which were not enough to stop proceedings.
We had two sets of boys competing in the pairs events, Blaise Drummond and Cathal Donohue in the 60m and 300m u/9 and Darren Corcoran and Aaron Wallace in the 60m and 500m u/10. The boys competed very well throughout the day and they certainly enjoyed the experience, despite finishing out of the medal places.
Matthew Molloy, Cian Corcoran safely qualified from the very competitive heats of the u/12 boys 600m but Niall Brady, Luke Greene, Arthur Drummond were unlucky not to advance to the final to join them. In the final, Matthew simply dominated and going to the front from the start opened up a sizeable lead to win easily, followed home by Cian finishing strongly just out of the medal places. Moving to the u/13 girls 600m, Muireann Donohue and Orla Manning were unlucky not to advance to the final, especially Orla who missed out by mere hundredths of a second in her heat. On to the u/13 boys 600m where Jamie Wallace and Conor Liston won their heats to advance to the final, but unfortunately not joined by Alex Lynch despite a great effort in his heat to just miss a place in the final. Right from the start of the final, Conor took the lead, closely tracked by Jamie right on his heels. Going into the final bend, Conor began to pull away but Jamie stayed close and into the home straight when it looked like Mullingar would record a 1-2 finish, Jamie was caught and passed very near the finish to cross the line in third, behind Conor in first place in a thrilling race to watch.
There were five heats of the u/12 girls 60m but Katie Kilmurray made it look easy in her heat to advance to the semi-final but despite a good effort in her semi-final, she didn’t advance to the final. There were five heats of the u/12 boys 60m too, where Eoin Donohue advanced to the semi-final, but Arthur Drummond was unlucky to miss out by just one place. Eoin battled hard in his semi-final but didn’t qualify for the final. Orla Manning and Muireann Donohue competed well in the u/13 girls 80m, but with six heats, qualification was extremely difficult and unfortunately neither of the girls advanced to the semi-finals. We ended the day in the medals again thanks to Kyle Faherty who easily won his heat of the u/13 boys 80m and absolutely dominated the final to win by a big margin. Very well done to all the Mullingar athletes that competed with great energy and enthusiasm over what was a long day for some of them.
