[dropcap]D[/dropcap]CU Archery enjoyed a successful final intervarsity meeting of the year in NUIG, coming home from Galway with six golds, four silver and two bronze.
Nicolo Fantonj won gold in the Barebow Male Beginner discipline while Ryan Kirk, Alison Boland and Niall O’Hanlon won the Barebow Team event.
Further success came from the recurve discipline as Fiachra MacDermott won the Recurve Male Advanced and Rhiannon O’Connor won the Recurve Female Beginner.
MacDermott and O’Connor then went on to claim double gold as they won the Recurve Team competition with Dean Lalor and Oskars Veide.
The Compound Team, made up of Luke Oonan, Stephen Walker and Tara McMullan also claimed gold, meaning the recurve and compound team won gold at all five intervarsities this year.
“All the intervarsities went exceptionally well, and while we didn’t place in Barebow until the second half of the season since we couldn’t make a full team until then, our Compound and Recurve teams came first in every intervarsity.”
“Ultimately we dominated the league with DCU students which we have done so for the past couple of years,” double gold medallist Rhiannon O’Connor told The College View.
On a personal level, O’Connor, who has been doing archery for two years, having started in her first year in DCU, had been looking to improve through the year but admitted she hadn’t expected to claim the individual gold.
“I have been aiming throughout the year to improve myself and see how I got on, but as the year went by I got more and more competitive and wanted to win an individual medal. I didn’t think I had a chance till halfway through the season when I saw an immense improvement in my shooting.”
“I went to NUIG with the mindset of more so looking at the overall League scores, not imagining that I would place first in my category in that intervarsity,” O’Connor said.
DCU claimed six more medals at the intervarsities as Alison Boland claimed silver in the Barebow Female while Tara McMullan, of the compound team, took silver in the Compound Female discipline.
The Mixed Team also came away from Galway with a Silver as did Dean Lalor, who completed a 1-2 for DCU in the Recurve Male Advanced category, finishing behind Fiachra MacDermott.
Niall O’Hanlon and Emma Goodwin claimed DCU’s final two medals of the meeting, winning bronze in the Barebow Male Advanced and Recurve Female Intermediate respectively.
Gerard Grimes
Image Credit: Santiago de Arribas de Renedo