Five athletes from Waterford competed in the European Junior Championships in Hengelo, Holland last week, and the two main hopes, David McCarthy and Kelly Proper both had disappointing results. David competed in the 1,500 metres - going on the times he had been posting prior to the event he looked capable of being in the running for a medal. In his heat, however, which by all accounts was a very rough race, and very tactical, he was well outside his best time in finishing eighth in 3 minutes 53-51 seconds and so failed to progress to the final. In the long jump qualifying round Kelly Proper did make it through to the final twelve with a leap of 6-02 metres well below her best but with a leap of 5.79 metres she failed to make it through to the last eight in the final. One of her best jumps would have got her a medal. Jessie Barr competed in the 400 metres hurdles final round, with a personal best time of 59-55 seconds, she qualified for the semi-final the next day, but sadly couldn’t repeat the effort, and didn’t get through. But the performance was very positive indeed, as was the effort of Kalyn Sheehan in the same event. Even though she didn’t progress from round one, she had a seasons best time, she had missed out a lot of her preparation for the championships due to injury. The final competitor was Mairéad Murphy in the 100 metre hurdles, and she didn’t progress after a very slow start in her heat and was well outside her personal best time. In races like this if you don’t break at least even with the other competitors then all hope goes. For all five however, it was a great experience and hopefully all will have learned from it for their futures in the sport.