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It was poignant setting outside the Arena bar in UL on Tuesday night last, as the club made a small presentation to Fiona Moloney one of Ireland's leading shot putters this year as she gets ready to depart for Grand Canyon University in Phoenix Arizona. While many Limerick athletes went to the USA in the 1970s and 1980s, Fiona is the first Dooneen athlete to take up an athletic scholarship in the US since decathlete Barry Walsh back in the early 1990s went to Penn State.
Grand Canyon University is a prestigious Christian University established in 1949 and located in Phoenix, Arizona with 25,000 online and campus based students. GCU was interested in signing Fiona for her soccer skills initially, but when it was realised she was also a leading international athlete there interest was doubled. It is special therefore that she will play soccer in the autumn or as they say in the fall and she will compete with the T&F team in the spring term.
Coached by her father the legendary Gary Moloney, Fiona had a full agenda on and off the various sports fields of Limerick and further afield and also found time to sit her Leaving Cert in St Mary's, Charleville. This year Fiona threw a personal best of 12.65m and finished the season as the nationally ranked #2 shot putter behind the Manhattan College based Claire Fitzgeard from Tarbert. The highlight of her season though was probably representing the Irish senior team in Budapest where she acquitted herself with distinction.
Phil Roche was on hand to make a small presentation to Fiona before her departure and as she departs for one of the driest and sunniest places on earth with over 300 days of annual sunshine, to show Dooneen still has a sense of humour Fiona received one of our new high tech rainjackets - well you never know.
Also on hand to wish Fiona farewell was another Limerick athletic legend the great Mick O'Shea, who represented Ireland in the Moscow Olympics in 1980. Now based in the USA Mick himself was one of the first young Limerick athletes to take up a US athletic scholarship to Providence College, Rhode Island way back in the last century. |
