Anna designs a new jersey and wins a kit for U14 Blackrock camogie team

AS underage camogie players wait patiently to return to playing a lot of them are finding ways and means to keep occupied.

Some are hitting the ball off the gable end wall, using portable goalposts or just doing drills at home to keep occupied.

One young lady in the Blackrock camogie club kept herself occupied by entering a competition to design a new jersey for her club and to her delight young Anna Kearney’s design took first place. As a result, herself and the U14 team will proudly wear a new jersey when activities resume.

The idea behind the competition came from a company called ID Sports who are based between Mitchelstown and Kildorrey in an area known as Killee.

Thomas Tattan is the man who heads up the business and he told me how it came about and how Anna was the winner.

“We are a company that does custom made school and sports were, predominantly we have been involved for years in doing school wear but in recent years as we are also doing sportswear.

“Every year we run a competition to design something and we then give the person whose design wins a chance to nominate a school or in this case a club to get that design and item for their chosen group.”

This is the fourth year that Thomas has run a competition, last year it was a design a hurling glove, the year before it was a club or school hat but the response this year exceeded all his expectations;

“We were blown away by the amount of entries we received to design a jersey for your club. We had one thousand one hundred designs entered across a huge variety of sports, from GAA, camogie, ladies football, hockey, soccer, rugby, etc and each and everyone was superb.”

The huge task of witling it down was not left to Thomas, he got three independent people to pore over each and every entry and asked them to get it down to five, these people had the hard task of making what proved a difficult choice and Thomas explained they did not know who are where the entries came from;

“All they got were the drawings nothing else, the job was enormous and I think they will run the next time I ask them do a favour as no way did we ever imagine the amount of interest this would bring.

“Every design was superb but in the end, we got it down to five and then the fun began, these were posted on social media and we put them out there for people to vote and make their choice and there was some fun going on, the voting was neck and neck all through.“

As the five finalists battled it out there were 22,999 votes recorded, in the end just 34 votes separated Anna Kearney from Lily Codd who coincidentally also designed a camogie jersey for her club Butlerstown in Waterford.

In a wonderful gesture, Thomas decided as it was so close he would also give Lily a set of jerseys for her club so Anna and Lily and their clubs will be looking well when the season begins.

Anna is a youngster who loves camogie and sport, a pupil in Ursulines Convent Blackrock she comes from a very strong Blackrock GAA background.

She is the fourth generation of her family to play camogie with the club, her mother Ann was a former player, her grandmother Mary McCarthy and her great grandmother Annie Dorney all lined out with the club.

Her great-grandmother was a first cousin of the great hurler Eudie Coughlan so it is easy to see Anna’s love for a club that her brother Jack and Dad Colin are also very involved in.

The completion was brought to her attention by club PRO Orla O’Regan who spotted it on Facebook and a lot of the children decided to have a go.

“Blackrock Castle is on the crest of the hurlers jersey and I thought it would be nice to have a jersey with the castle displayed prominently on the front, it is so much part of the club history so it was something I was inspired by.“

Anna does art in school and her teacher Sarah Louise Conway can be very proud of her pupil.

As to what the future holds for the 14-year-old Rockie, well this was her reply.

“Maybe I might do something involving design.”

What’s the bet she will one day design a jersey to be proudly worn by our Cork teams.

Well done Anna and to ID Sports for encouraging our younger generation in these hard times for us all.