Lake District Athletic Club (LDAC) was founded in 2011 and started out with just 6 juvenile members. Today, it has a membership of almost 200 comprising largely of juvenile athletes. The club is based in Ballinrobe, Co. Mayo but encompasses the entire Lake District region of North Galway and South Mayo. In its ten years, LDAC has been named Mayo Athletic Juvenile Club of the Year twice and its athletes have won International, National, Provincial and County level titles in several disciplines: all of this without having a proper track or dedicated training area.
Up to now, the club has depended on hiring the facilities of neighbouring clubs to train. Lake District AC turned 10 in January 2021, and we believe it is high time we had a home of our own; a purpose-built Athletic training facility. The track will not only be a facility for the club, but one for the community at large. It will be available for schools, sports clubs, community groups and the public in general to use. It will be a safe environment for our children and an all-weather facility, which will enhance and compliment the great work already carried out by The Town Parks committee.
We are fortunate to have a number of high performance athletes such as Sarah Quinn, Serene O’ Toole, and Conor Cusack in the locality who are without question rising stars and may even have an eye on the Paris 2024 Olympics, and what a difference it would make for them to have a professional modern facility to train on in their local town. We believe our young athletes deserve the best chance
The New Facility
The facility will incorporate a 200m running track, 6 sprint lanes, long jump pit, high jump area and throws area. Full planning permission has been granted and we hope to get works on this exciting new facility underway in March/April 2021. The build will take 4 to 6 months approximately, and once complete, will be available not just for the Athletics club but, for the whole community; school, teams and individuals to use for generations to come.
We were fortunate to be awarded grant aid from the Sports Capital Programme 2018. However, the total cost of the project will far exceed the grant amount and the matching funds we had managed to raise before lockdown. A lot of the planned fundraising events for 2020 were derailed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however this has not deterred us and we will recommence our fundraising efforts as soon as it is permissible.
The track will be unique to the area but will engage the wider community. This is not only a training track for Lake District Athletics Club, but a resource for everyone and has the unreserved support from the community & neighbouring sporting organisations. It will enable the opportunity to unite and embrace all sports, ages and cultures. This project will not only improve performances within our club, it will benefit an entire community.
Check out our youtube video about the track HERE.
