Canoeing Ireland will be hosting an All Ireland Club Championships on the 12 & 13 April 2014 in Kilkenny. A total of 8 events will be run over the weekend on the Nore, the Barrow, Tramore and in Kilkenny City.
Here is a short brief of what the plan is for the Club Champs:
The Canoeing Ireland Club Championships will run on the 12 & 13 April 2014 in Kilkenny, the first weekend of the 2014 Easter School Holidays.
The Club Championships is easiest to describe as a similar format competition to the Intervarsity’s but for all of the Canoe Clubs in Ireland, including Northern Ireland and across all of the disciplines. The event will host competitions in all of the disciplines meaning that, unlike varsities, competitions will be run in parallel to each other over the weekend.
We will be running two competitions each morning and afternoon of the event which will allow scope for up to 8 discipline competitions to be hosted, the 7 competition disciplines and hopefully a White Water Race. There will be classes available for Juniors and Adults at each event.
Athletes will receive prizes for individual results in each discipline. For each discipline individual’s results will be awarded points and added together for each club to create a club ranking in each discipline. Club rankings in each discipline will then be awarded points and the points across all disciplines added for each club, the club with the most points at the end of the Championship will win the competition. We will create a temporary independent Canoeing Ireland members club for the purpose of this competition, all non club affiliated paddlers will paddle together as one club to compete against the established clubs.
The points system is designed so that each discipline is weighted the same so if your club is really strong at say freestyle or polo you have no advantage or disadvantage against a club who might be really strong at say Surf or Marathon. The points system is also designed to encourage clubs to enter as many disciplines as possible and as many people as possible in each discipline.
The preliminary running order will run something like this:
Saturday AM
Wild Water Racing – Clashganny
Surf – Tramore
Saturday PM
Slalom – Clashganny
Polo – The Nore in Kilkenny or The Watershed (Local pool)
Sunday AM
Marathon – The Nore – Kilkenny
White Water Race – Clashganny
Sunday PM
Sprint – The Nore in Kilkenny
Freestyle – The Nore – Kilkenny
We have the biggest party venue in Kilkenny, Langtons Hotel, booked for the Saturday Night Party with Live music and plenty of banter!
Event entries are now open. Keep an eye out for event details in local and national media as well as on our Website and Facebook page. We also plan on printing off a ream of posters early next month and sending a few out to every club in the country as well as having stickers and flyers in all the Canoeing Shops Nationally.
As part of the event any club who registers for the event before the start of February will be invited to a club reps weekend in February followed by 6 discipline training weekends and a river safety and rescue weekend in the run up to the event to help clubs in their event preparations.
That’s a total of 8 training weekends available to all clubs who register for the event. This format will help to co-ordinate the club champs but more importantly help clubs co-ordinate their training programmes and preparation for the event with the added bonus of improving networks across the country. Dates for the training weekends will be confirmed prior to opening entries.
Canoeing Ireland hopes that this event will be a storming success and we would hope that this may become an annual event on the Canoeing Ireland events Calendar in the future.
We look forward to seeing your club there and hearing from you all over the next few weeks!
For more information and entry forms head over to the Canoeing Ireland website
http://canoe.ie/en-us/competition/clubchampionships2014.aspx
