Success For Valley in National Walks and National Road Relays

National Walks Event

The sun shone it was a beautiful day to be out and about and Killybegs was the venue, it was an early start Sunday morning and Valley athletes took advantage of the occassion to impact successfully in the walk event at the Donegal venue including the National 20K. with Ann McGill taking the silver medal and gaining pride of place indeed it as double joy for Donegal athletes as Brian O'Domnaill, county councillor from Falcarragh, took the silver in the men's 20K behind Olympic athlete Jamie Costin, West Waterford. In the underage open races Shane Bonner, Convoy; Fionnuala Bruton and Aoife Whelan Stranorlar plus Michael Penrose, Aghyaran struck gold and were impressive as was Shauna Guthrie, Clara Dunnion and Melanie Penrose, Gesilda Penrose won the master women's 3K.

National Road Relays

Further south in Carlow the master men were recording a clean sweep of national team trophies having won road relay and Bonner 32.45, Kieran Carlin 32.57, Pat Hegarty 33.04 and James McMahon 33.06 beating the Dublin challenge. Well done to all and team manager Neil Martin whose committment was so evident as he journeyed to the event early morning due to a family occassion back at Valley the previous evening. Jim Hines won his age group category timed at 53 minutes. Kevin Holian a lone participant in the senior section was timed at 32.06.

North West 10k

The 10K scene moves to Letterkenny and the North West 10k. at 3pm this Sunday.

Exiles

In the U.S. Joe Byrne recorded a victory in 8.59.78 in a steeplechase event in Nashville, Tennesse an encouraging season opener, he can get that down below 8.50 in the coming weeks hopefully and put himself in the reckoning for the European Cup in Slovakia in June.

Sympathy

The recent sad news of the death of Mick Doherty, Glencovitt was sad news for club members as Mick was a stalwart supporter of Finn Valley in its developing stage, a period which saw members train at Mac Cumhaill Park; decide to purchase the disused factory that is now the club centre, Mick with his neighbour Patsy McGinty and his brother in law Anthony Gillespie were seriously in support as committee members as athletics began to become established in the area. They supported fund raising particularly the '25' card drives that were an aspect of life at that time. Mick helped set up courses for the various Ulster cross-country championships that we hosted at that time, indeed his brother Vincent, now domiciled in Manchester, was a successful athlete for Strabane A.C. in another era along with John Carlin, Francie Irwin (R.I.P.), Cyril O'Boyle and others from Donegal. The current success of Valley owes a lot to the likes of Mick who did the groundwork in the 1970s Club members extend sympathy to the family circle. May he rest in peace.

Newsletters by Niall McGonagle, Club P.R.O.