Waterford Combined Credit Unions Supreme Juvenile Athlete of the Year Awards 2009: overall winner Shane Quinn (front centre) with (seated from left) Megan Kiely, Ciara Giles-Doran, Kate Veale, Orla Queally; (standing) Sinead Flynn, Tom Whelan, Zoe Scanlon, Liam Houlihan accepting for his brother Thomas Houlihan, Hugh Moran, John Halley.
On Saturday last at the Tower Hotel the Annual Combined Credit Unions Waterford Young Athlete of the Year award went to Shane Quinn of Ferrybank AC for the second successive year.
All the 2009 monthly winners had outstanding performances, with Shane Quinn’s 3000m silver medal at the European Youth Olympics in Tampere, Finland, an exceptional achievement.
It was the highlight of another fantastic year by the 17-year-old De La Salle College student, in which he also won the junior 1,500m title at the Scottish Indoor Championships, the intermediate 800 and 1500m at the Munster Schools Championships, the Munster Schools cross country championships, the Irish Schools intermediate 1,500 championships and the Munster junior 3,000 metres championship.
Guest of honour was Caitriona McKiernan, former European Cross-Country Champion, four-time World Cross-Country silver medallist, and winner of the Berlin (1997) and London and Amsterdam Marathons (’98)
She spoke to the young athletes in a very clear and easy-listening way, telling them to train hard, take all the advice they could, listen carefully to their coaches, stay focused, but most of all to enjoy what they do if they wanted to further their athletic careers in the longer term. For full story see our print edition.
