Jai Benson hopped, skipped and jumped his way to a fourth All-Ireland title in the last five years with a fantastic personal best performance of 14.41 in the Senior Boys Triple Jump. Another excellent personal best of 6.93 in the Long Jump saw him lead the competition in the early rounds, only to be pipped for the Gold in the latter stages. These points contributed to a narrow joint second place finish for the Senior Boys team, just failing to retain the title they won last year. We did have the consolation of collecting the Senior Boys Shield for the first time in College History. Other Contributors to the team were Tim Scott 5th in the 400m hurdles in a personal best of 60.8s, Cormac O’Rourke 5th in the 800m in 1.57, Adam Ferris 5th in the 5000m in 15.49, Aidan McGeown 8th in the Hammer with 30m, 4 by 100m relay 6th in 46.03s and 4 by 400m relay 4th in 3.34. Matthew Lavery ran a brave race in the U16 Boys mile, finishing 5th in 4.43 after leading the race for the middle two laps.

The highlight on the track undoubtedly came in the Intermediate Boys 3000m where Fionntan Campbell and Callum Morgan tore up the form book and obliterated their personal bests to claim 2nd and 3rd places respectively behind the big pre-race favourite. A large group remained together for the first mile with the St. Malachy’s boys content to sit in and conserve energy. When the winner made a big move with 3 laps to go it was Callum Morgan who led the chase pack which quickly dwindled down to three athletes. Callum Continued to push the pace and Fionntan looked to be hanging on in 4th place, but with 450m to go Fionntan made a big move for home and Callum tucked into his slipstream. This is the way they remained to the finish with Fionntan taking a huge 30s off his personal best to run 8.56 and Callum finishing a second behind with a 15s personal best. This represents a big step up in standard for these boys, winning their first individual All-Ireland Schools medals.