Echo Women in Sport awards: 12 brilliant monthly contenders vie for top prize

THIS evening we honour some of the top sports stars in their chosen field as the overall Echo Women in Sport Awards are held at Páirc Uí Chaoimh.

From the 12 monthly winners, an overall winner will be chosen, along with a Hall of Fame award.

The diversity of the sports shows just how well Cork athletes perform, be it at local, national, or international levels.

Some of the monthly winners’ sports include camogie, hockey, cycling, rowing, boxing, ladies football, Aussie Rules, athletics, basketball, and swimming and we even have MMA for the first time. But no matter what the sport, all these winners have a number of qualities in common.

All possess the drive, desire, and passion to be the best of the best in their chosen sport which comes about through hard work and a determination to keep going no matter what.

And for some they have excelled in more than one sport and over the years could just have easily been honoured for other successes along the way.

Take Amy O’Connor as just one example of that. When the English women’s soccer team won the European Championships she had played against and beaten many of those players with Irish underage sides.

O’Connor played international soccer until she was 17 and could have easily gone on to a professional career across the water but gave it up because camogie was her first love.

Annie Walsh has countless All-Ireland, Munster, and National League football medals with Cork, but has now added European championship medal to her haul for Aussie Rules with the Irish Banshees.

Others, like Annette Quaid, suffered a number of setbacks, but never gave up and went on to win three gold medals at the Masters European Athletics Championships last year.

BRAVE

It takes guts to get into the cage for an MMA fight, but it takes a lot more than just guts to walk into a training gym full of boys and men at just 11 years of age.

But that’s what Louise Brady did when she took up the sport. It’s only a few short years ago, but there weren’t too many girls taking part in the sport then.

But the gutsy Brady joined her local club and quickly showed that she had what it takes to become the best of the best and it was no great surprise to see her win a gold medal at the Youth World MMA Championships in Abu Dhabi last year.

And you can continue on and on with all our monthly winners, like Hannah O’Shea, who wrote her name into the history books in 2022 by becoming the first female swimmer to win the Lee Swim.

So, all of us at The Echo salute all our Women In Sport monthly winners and all those who excel in their chosen sport and congratulate you for what you have achieved and for what you will achieve in the coming years.