About the Club

The club was formed in October 1978 out of a meeting in Gneeveguilla National School.

Amongst the attendance were Sean Jackie O'Leary, Fr.James Kissane CC Gneeveguilla, Paddy & Tom Joe O'Donoghue, Sean O'Leary Guillane, Cyril Hickey, Dan Morley and Jack McCarthy the village.

In those days, there were two Athletic Organisations in this part of the country - B.L.E and N.A.C.A. (There were many more in Northern Ireland).

Joe Walsh Riocht addressed the meeting and came out strongly in favour of the club joining B.L.E. However when he left the room at the request of Sean Jackie, the gathering voted to join N.A.C.A. as there were several active N.A.C.A clubs in the area at the time, namely Millstreet, Spa Muckross, Glenflesk, St.Oliver Plunketts Killarney, Beaufort and Kenmare, - Kilgarvan was rumoured to being re-vitialised, which happened the following year.

Two officers who were elected that night are still active and in their positions with the club - The O'Donoghue brothers Paddy & Tom Joe are still there.

The first adventure for the new club was the cross-country in Kerry and we had instant success with Sean Og and Owen O'Leary, Orla Fleming, Sheila & Josephine O'Donnoghue to the forefront. In fact they contested the National Cross-Country championships in Navan Co.Meath in early 1979. They travelled with Iveragh from Castleisland by bus, to my recollection they brought no medals but had a great weekend.

From there on it was full steam ahead. Since it would take volumes to go through all that has happened since, we won't go down that road. Just include some landmark events over the years.

In 2003 we celebrated our 25th Birthday with a brilliant function in Gneeveguilla attended by Michael Heery President of the new A.A.I and Georgina Drummy National Secretary A.A.I.

A couple of years ago, one of our members Colm Rothery, won the World Masters 800m & 1500m in Germany.

Some of the stand out athletes down the years would be too numerous to mention and without proper research we would leave out more than we would put in, but I will pick out two, one from the present and one from the past. No problem with any of the two - Jennifer Walsh Glenlara owned the mid-ninties. She was so popular up the country that the crowds used to chant her name when she was competing. In a career that only lasted 4 years, she annexed no less that 96 All-Ireland medals, both track & field & cross country. Today's star is Elish Fitzpatrick Taur. Not far from Jennifer's place, it is too early to write too much regarding Eilish, but the fact that she won four gold and 1 silver at the National Championships 2008, signals what may be yet achieved internationally as she also came first in the celtic games 4 nations event last year.

The club are proud to have provided National & Provencal Officers over the years, National we had Breeda Barrett, Brendan Ashe and Tom Joe O'Donoghue. Munster we had Tom Joe O'Donoghue and still have Paddy O'Donoghue working away as Munster Treasurer.

Friday nights have, down the years, been a big night in the world of the athletic club. From a very early stage there was training in the Jim Tady Willies Hall, even though it was small by today's standards, it certainly filled the bill at the time and many the aspiring athlete first came to promise doing their stuff in Jims. A feature of training in those early days was doing the "Ring", which was a round trip of 3 miles starting and finishing at Jims. The Ring of course included the notorious Gleesons Hill, still well known to races in Gneeveguilla. Indeed anyone who could run the Ring in under 18mins was worth carrying further.

In later years we crossed the road for our Friday night session, to the more modern and bigger community centre and now to the much bigger gym in Rathmore.

Then in 1995, if Friday nights were not crowded enough, we started our draw, which still goes on. Big money is now the norm.

Down the years how things have evolved - the field training replaced with track training, indoor training replaced with a few floor & wall exercises. Now it's medicine ball, brush handles weights, hurdles and so on.

The local coach is still to the good but if any young athlete is showing promise, they are sent on to Jerry Horgan, Derry McSweeney or the Munster coaches.

We now have our own bus which we bought new in 2007. we own thousands of euros worth of new equipment and we hold training sessions in different locations regularly.

We are the third biggest club in the 32 counties.

We have fit4life in four locations and the Jack O'Keeffe road race on Easter Monday.