St Peters end cross-county season on a high note at All Ireland Championships

The curtain came down on the Juvenile Cross Country season on December 4th when the National Championship for uneven ages took place in Conna, County Cork. 

Dearbhla Allen finished off her very successful season with possibly her best performance of the year. The promising young runner moved up in age and was part of a six athlete breakaway group from the start over a challenging 4000M course in the girls U17 race.

She finished very strong to take a fourth-place finish, which won her an individual medal along with a team gold medal as part of the Leinster victorious team.

In addition to that, possibly the biggest achievement was her qualifying for the Ireland U17 team which will travel to an International event in Perth, Scotland. That will take place on Saturday the 14th of January.

This indeed was a fantastic achievement which was awarded to the first six finishers and will also include fellow Louth athlete Eimear Cooney, who managed to finish in third place. It is of course fantastic to have two Wee County girls making it onto a National squad that only includes six.

Niamh Brady rounded off her very impressive Cross-Country season with another individual National medal. She has been an ever present at national championships, but really knuckled down this year at training in an attempt to land an individual medal.

She went one better in Cork. Having won an Irish medal two weeks previously in Donegal, she moved up an age and managed to finish in tenth place in the girls U19 event, taking one of the top 12 individual medals and also helping her Leinster team to the team silver medal.

Liam McKeown, who is a multi-talented sports man, made the journey to Cork also, having qualified as part of the Leinster team from the recent Leinster Championships.

As always, Liam gave it his all and ran very strongly, battling his way through the large field of athletes. And he had a particularly strong finish to end well up the final pecking order in what was an extremely strong boys U13 race. Although finishing outside the medals, he gained valuable experience for next year.