Lavin and Lawler win top athlete awards at Leevale meeting

Athletics: Sarah Lavin was named female athlete of the meet at the Leevale T&F promotion at the Cork IT yesterday in unusual circumstances.

After having only finished fourth in the 100m, she returned later in the afternoon with an impressive 24.85 200m.

In blustery conditions, Lavin recorded a 14.05 win in the 100m hurdles, three hundreds of a second faster than she ran last year at the same meet.

In second place was Elizabeth Morland of Cushinstown whose time 14.23 was inside the EYOT qualification standard.

“I was glad to get the win in the 200m, the time of 24.85 was good in the conditions,” said Lavin after finishing ahead of Kelly Proper and Phil Healy.

“It was a really good training day, and it was a brilliantly run meet as always.”

Bandon athlete Healy had earlier looked impressive in taking the 100m in 12.24 ahead of Proper (12.30) and Catherine McManus (12.32).

“I was happy enough with that, my heat was a disaster and I had to wake myself up going into the final,” said Healy.

“Coming out and getting the win is all that matters today, times don’t matter because of the weather and now we’ll move on to the Inter-Varsities next week.”

Marcus Lawler of the St Laurence O’Toole club in Carlow had a sprint double last year at the start of a season which saw him set Irish junior records in both events but he suffered a setback in his heat of the 100m when his blocks slipped and he fell to the track.

After the race was rerun he easily qualified for the final but had to give second best to David Hynes (Menapians) who won by four-hundreds in a time of 11.22.

“It was hard going today, but it was good to win after Marcus beat me here last year,” said Hynes.

“It’s good to get the season underway, I’m running the guest race at the Inter-Varsities next week and then I have a month or so before a couple of races in Belgium.”

Lawler later made amends by going on to win the 200m in 21.87 which earned him the male Athlete of the Meet award. Promoting club Leevale winners included junior Sam Healy’s 6.99m in the long jump ahead of clubmate David Quilligan.

Edmond O’Halloran, in his first attempt at the 400m hurdles, recorded a fine 57.03 to add to his 110m hurdles victory of 16.48.

Patrick McSweeney from Bandon also had a double when winning the shot and hammer. Other winners to impress included Paul Murphy (Ferrybank) in the 400m (48.65), 17-year-old Louise Shanahan in the 800m (2:11.01) and Ben Thistlewood in the 3,000m (8:48.77).