{"id":597665,"date":"2026-08-19T03:04:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T03:04:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597665\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T03:04:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T03:04:15","slug":"clare-skaters-make-big-leap-forward-at-all-ireland-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/597665\/","title":{"rendered":"Clare skaters make big leap forward at All Ireland competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

The Irish Skateboard Association (ISA) hosted their All Ireland Skate Competition at Mount Kennett skate park in Limerick city on Saturday, August 8.<\/p>\n

Several Clare skateboarders took part in the day\u2019s competition across all categories, including 14-year-old Shannon skater Anton O\u2019Brien McGorrigan who came joint first in the Men\u2019s 13-17 category.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Roy O\u2019Halloran, one of the ISA event organisers and a skater for many years, said that the organisation\u2019s main goals are to improve communication and collaboration between skaters and local authorities, with a \u201cmutual goal of creating spaces available for young people\u201d, activating spaces within towns and cities for young people to be able to use for skateboarding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve 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\u2019t know anything about skateboarding, and then they end up wasting money on a park that\u2019s completely unusable,\u201d he said. Part of what the ISA would like to see is activation of unused street spaces as areas for skateboarding.<\/p>\n

\u201cSkateboarding is so unconventional when you compare it to mainstream sports, in the sense that any public space can be used for it,\u201d Roy explained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve seen places in Ennis, and there\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

The ISA was launched in 2024, as skateboarding has seen a resurgence in popularity in recent years according to Ennis skater Rob O\u2019Riordan, who has been involved in the Clare scene since his teens as a roller skater, but got into skateboarding during Covid.<\/p>\n

He noted that while the scene in Ennis is quite small, every few years it \u201cebbs and flows\u201d, and that individual skaters can do a lot to promote the sport alongside the ISA in more rural parts of Ireland.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d love them to come up and bring boards, and we\u2019ll get loads of people skating and get a standard up and we can start having jams and our own events.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the ISA approached and said, \u201cLook, we need someone in each location to give a few lessons or help out, they\u2019ll get volunteers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Reporter covering Shannon Town and the surrounding\u00a0area, Ellen Gough studied journalism and politics\u00a0at 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A number of Clare skateboarders took part in the first All Ireland skate competition to be held in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[164215,15469,61,60,43,253274],"class_list":["post-597665","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-breakingnews","tag-clare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-skaters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597665","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}