Impressive haul of medals for Offaly swimmers at national Community Games finals

THERE was another super haul of medals for Offaly wwimmers in the National Finals of the Community Games held in UL on the 24th September 2022 with the swimmers bringing home 9 national medals in total.

Will Brown (Ferbane Area) started off the medal tally with an impressive 4th medal in the U12 Boys Freestyle. This was quickly added to by Isabel Mooney (Tullamore Area) who took gold in the U12 Backstroke. Her sister Emma Mooney couldn’t let her sister take all the glory and put in a fine Butterfly performance to secure a silver medal in the U14 Butterfly. Sasha Coleman brought another medal home for the Ferbane Area with a 4th place medal in the U16 freestyle. Both Sasha and Emma are in their respective age groups again next year.

A particularly special event is the squad/relay teams as swimmers have to work hard together to get a result and Tullamore’s U13 girls squad did just that with a first place result. In true Community Games Spirit all swimmers got to take part between the heat and the final and Grace Connolly, Aoibheann Mannion, Solomiya Horodetska, Emma Mooney & Isabel Mooney went home very happy and proud girls securing 5 gold medals coming ahead of Cork, Clare and Leitrim in the medal field.

All the county’s swimmers did their county and areas very proud with Ciara Daly (Killeigh), Lucy O’Rourke, Tom O’Rourke, (both Mucklagh-Rahan-the Island) Solomiya Horodetska and Maebh Coll (both Tullamore), Luke Healy (Ferbane), Jack McGuinness (Ferbane) and Luke Sweeney Noonan (Edenderry) all getting into highly contested Finals.

Ferbane's relay team of brothers Jack and Harry McGuiness along with Will Brown and Jack Samuels also impressed with getting into the boys U13 relay final.

Alison McGuinness, Grace Connolly, Aoibheann Mannion, Fionn Doohan, Oisin Doohan, Jack Duffy, Peter Coyne, Patryk Cichomski and Harry McGuinness also proudly represented their areas in their individual events , all competing at a very high level. 

Offaly swimming has a very bright future indeed!