BALLINACARRIGA’S Maeve O’Neill won a bronze medal at the recent NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.
The West Cork athlete ran the third leg of the women's distance medley relay, as her Providence College team powered to a brilliant bronze medal, finishing less than one second behind the winners at Virginia Beach Sports Center in Virginia Beach.
Maeve, a sophomore at the Rhode Island based college, ran her 800m leg in 2:04.84, with her team including Shannon Flockhart (1200m), Jill Fenerty (400m) and Kimberley May (1600m).
Maeve O'Neill (back, right) and her Providence College team-mates.
Incredibly, the top four teams all beat the previous championship record time. Maeve, just turned 21 years old earlier this month, and her team-mates all earned First Team All-America honours after their medal-winning effort.
‘A fabulous performance,’ said the Providence coach Ray Treacy, brother of Irish athletics great John Treacy. ‘To finish less than a second behind BYU at an NCAA championship is a fantastic race and I am very proud of all the ladies. They have been getting better every week and today was their best performance in the last month. We are going in the right direction, got close today, but that’s the NCAA championship.’
