Kings River Athletics Club

Since its tentative beginnings in December 2018, Kings River Athletics Club has grown into a confident, ambitious, successful club, able to compete and participate at the highest levels.

The club was founded out of a strong athletics interest in Stoneyford and its surrounding areas.  Since 2016, Adele Walsh of Adele’s Eat Train Live has been operating her very popular running classes in Stoneyford and Danesfort.   Seeing the enthusiasm for road races, Adele raised the possibility of setting up a club to enable her athletes to participate in county, Leinster and National competitions.  A committee was elected and very quickly the club was up and “running”! The club caters for adults only and has members from Stoneyford, Danesfort, Kells, Dunnamaggan, Ballyhale, Kilmaganny and Windgap.

Many of the members had never run Cross Country or Track before, but quickly took on the new challenges. Over the past two years the club has had success at county, Regional and at National Level.  Many of our athletes compete at Masters level. Some of the highlights of 2019 include All-Ireland medals in long jump and 400m, Leinster medals in road races and cross country, a haul of medals at the County Outdoor Track & Field event in May, as well as a hugely successful day at the County Indoors in Tullamore in January.

The club has almost 40 members, with most of them training and competing on a regular basis. We also have two coaches recently trained at Level 1 with Athletics Ireland.

Club ethos:

While our club is of course interested in individual successes, we are far more interested in athlete participation.   We encourage participation from every member, no matter what their level may be.  We very much enjoy team performances and love to have relay teams for T & F, or teams for Cross Country.  We have a "give it a go" attitude, as exemplified by our members’ participation in jump events without any coaching.  We encourage participation in competitions and races, but there is no pressure on anyone to compete if they don't want to.  Our members have many different reasons for being involved in athletics, from fitness, social aspect and friendship, weight loss or maintenance, as well as competition.  Most of us are just trying to be a little fitter and a little faster than we were this time last year, while enjoying the chat and craic of training and competing!

Club training is on Monday nights at 7pm at Stoneyford Community Centre and Tuesday nights at 7pm at Danesfort GAA grounds. Coach Adele Walsh is present for speedwork training on those nights.  We also have regular weekend long runs on Saturday or Sunday mornings.   Details of long runs are published on the club WhatsApp group and on our Club Facebook page. Members also meet up during the week for 5 or 6 mile runs on an ad-hoc basis. 

The club also hosted Catherina McKiernan and David Gillick recently (Oct 2019) to talk about their athletic experiences, give training tips and nutrition and answer questions.  It was an inspiring evening and raised valuable funds for the club as well as over €2000 for the charity GOAL.

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