UCD Swimming, led by Irish Olympian succeeds at Intervarsities

The UCD Swimming and Waterpolo Club, last weekend, competed in the annual Swimming and Lifesaving Intervarsity competition, which was hosted by DCU in Donaghmede Leisure Centre.   

The weekend was a tremendous success for the 21 member strong swim team, particularly the women’s team, which won the overall best team award with 62 points, putting Trinity College into 2^nd place with 45 points and NUI Maynooth into 3^rd place with 34 points. The men’s team came 2^nd overall, with 31 points, while Maynooth won this section with 69 points. In the end only 6 points separated Maynooth (117) and UCD (111). Maynooth, with a 35 strong swim team went home overall winners.   

The medal haul by UCD was also impressive. Reaching 18 out of 29 finals the total tally of medals was 25 (13 Gold, 6 silver, 6 bronze). UCD Swim Coach, former Irish Olympic Swimmer (Atlanta 1996), Earl McCarthy commented ‘this year's Intervarsities was one of the most competitive in many years. Overall it was a fantastic performance from UCD Swimming. Our Women's team dominated winning overall best team award and UCD Men's team fought a tough battle gaining second place behind Maynooth. NUIM have been running a well established scholarship team from many years now so it looks like Varsities swimming is going to have a challenging yet successful future.’

Martin ‘Spitz’ McGann, the head coach of NUI Maynooth noted that “This years Championships have been of the highest standard, it was harder to make finals here than at the Irish Short Course Championships last week.”

The UCD team rose to the challenge with great spirit; all the members of the team supported each other and we got off to an early lead, UCD came back strong in the second half with Olympian Aisling Cooney lifting her team into a competitive position.

The women’s relay team picked up gold in both of their relays comfortably. The team included Aisling Cooney from Dublin who competed for Ireland in the Beijing Olympics, and will travel to Istanbul this weekend for the European Short Course Championships; Julie Galloway from Texas who swam the English Channel this year; Sarah Caulfield, a member of the UCD Elite Swim Team; and Grace Sweeney, a member of the Irish High Performance Swim Team.   

The men’s relay team won silver in both of their events in hard fought races. David Cooney, Collinge, Paul Murphy, Vincent McArdle, all members of the UCD Elite Swim Team and Conor McRitchie, who swam the breaststroke leg of the medley relays.

In sum, it was an impressive performance from UCD Swimming, which is growing from strength to strength and will be certain winners and both men and women’s top university awards at next year’s varsities.

The point’s winners for UCD at the competition were as follows:

50m Backcrawl

Paul Murphy, Conor Hillick  

50m Butterfly

Paul Murphy  

50m Breaststroke

Sarah Caulfield

50m Freestyle

Vincent McArdle  

100m Individual Medley

Julie Galloway, Grace Sweeney  

100m Backcrawl

Maeve O’Regan

100m Butterfly

David Cooney, Aisling Cooney

100m Frontcrawl

Vincent McArdle, Grace Sweeney  

Men’s Relays Team

Paul Murphy, Vincent McArdle, David Cooney, Conor McRitchie (Medley), Gary Collinge (Frontcrawl)  

Women’s Relays Team

Sarah Caulfield, Aisling Cooney, Grace Sweeney, Julie Galloway  

Cannon Relay Team

Paul Murphy, David Cooney, Vincent McArdle, Grace Sweeney, Sarah Caulfield, Aisling Cooney.