A number of Clare skateboarders took part in the first All Ireland skate competition to be held in the Mid-West in over fifteen years.
The Irish Skateboard Association (ISA) hosted their All Ireland Skate Competition at Mount Kennett skate park in Limerick city on Saturday, August 8.
Several Clare skateboarders took part in the day’s competition across all categories, including 14-year-old Shannon skater Anton O’Brien McGorrigan who came joint first in the Men’s 13-17 category.
The competition was the first all Ireland skate competition to be held at the Limerick skate park since 2010, and the second All Ireland organised by the ISA, which is working to promote skating across the country, as well as seeking recognition from Sport Ireland and the government as a national governing body for the sport.
Roy O’Halloran, one of the ISA event organisers and a skater for many years, said that the organisation’s main goals are to improve communication and collaboration between skaters and local authorities, with a “mutual goal of creating spaces available for young people”, activating spaces within towns and cities for young people to be able to use for skateboarding.
“What we’ve seen in the past is skate parks being built where councils will basically put out a tender for a company to build and design a skate park who don’t know anything about skateboarding, and then they end up wasting money on a park that’s completely unusable,” he said. Part of what the ISA would like to see is activation of unused street spaces as areas for skateboarding.
“Skateboarding is so unconventional when you compare it to mainstream sports, in the sense that any public space can be used for it,” Roy explained.
“I’ve seen places in Ennis, and there’s often a wide open public space where you could literally put a bit of metal on a ledge, and that offers a space for those skateboarders to be able to go, as simple as that.
“The skateboarders will come and use that space, and it often creates a safer environment for passers-by, but also creates a bit of atmosphere in that space, and also gives the young people somewhere to go.”
The ISA was launched in 2024, as skateboarding has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years according to Ennis skater Rob O’Riordan, who has been involved in the Clare scene since his teens as a roller skater, but got into skateboarding during Covid.
He noted that while the scene in Ennis is quite small, every few years it “ebbs and flows”, and that individual skaters can do a lot to promote the sport alongside the ISA in more rural parts of Ireland.
While there are skate parks in Ennis and Shannon, they are relatively small, and Rob said often the Lees Road skate park can be clogged up with young people using it as a playground.
“There’s nothing really there for kids unless they want to run around the woods, and the playground is for toddlers so they use it a lot.
“I’d love them to come up and bring boards, and we’ll get loads of people skating and get a standard up and we can start having jams and our own events.
“If the ISA approached and said, “Look, we need someone in each location to give a few lessons or help out, they’ll get volunteers,” he said.
Reporter covering Shannon Town and the surrounding area, Ellen Gough studied journalism and politics at University of Limerick and has a strong background in local news. A native of Limerick, she has previously worked for The Limerick Leader, The Echo in Tallaght and Hot Press Magazine.