Athletics Ireland has announced a significant expansion of its high-performance coaching structure as part of its refreshed High-Performance Strategy 2025-2028, backed by increased investment from Sport Ireland to build towards the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028.
The governing body has received an additional €210,000 in funding through Sport Ireland’s Professional Coach Programme, led by Ciarán Ward, to support the professionalisation of its coaching environment across senior and pathway programmes.
The latest appointments also underline a notable commitment to gender balance within the high-performance structure, with women appointed to several key leadership and coaching positions across endurance and relay disciplines.
Mark Kenneally, who has served as Performance Endurance Lead since 2023, will now also take on the newly expanded role of Performance Coaching Lead. In the position, he will oversee Athletics Ireland and Sport Ireland’s investment in performance coaching while working with event-group leads to further align domestic programmes and overseas camps.
Joining the senior endurance set-up is Emmett Dunleavy, who has been appointed as Performance Endurance Coach. Dunleavy has played a central role in Ireland’s recent European Cross Country success and will work alongside Kenneally in overseeing the National Endurance Group.
Athletics Ireland has also strengthened its Performance Pathway Programme with several new appointments designed to support athletes transitioning towards elite senior competition. Long-serving Pathway Lead Jacqui Freyne will now be supported by Niamh Fitzgerald as Pathway Endurance Coach and Karen Kirk as Pathway Sprints and Relays Lead, alongside Barry Pender and Tom Reynolds as Performance Jumps Coaches.
The appointments of Fitzgerald, Kirk and Freyne mean women now occupy a number of influential coaching and development roles within the high-performance system, reflecting a growing emphasis on diversity and representation in elite coaching structures.
Fitzgerald brings extensive international experience as a former Irish middle-distance athlete, having competed at European and World Cross Country Championships and the World University Games. She has coached with Lucan Harriers for 14 years and currently coaches her daughter, Saoirse Fitzgerald, an Irish international underage athlete.
Kirk is widely recognised for her contribution to Ireland’s relay success, including leading the Irish U20 Women’s 4x100m relay team to World Championship silver in 2018 and guiding the senior women’s relay squad to a national record at the European Championships that same year.
Pender and Reynolds will work across both senior and pathway programmes. Pender, one of Ireland’s leading high jumpers with a lifetime best of 2.26m, has also been heavily involved in coach education and development work through Athletics Ireland and DCU.
Reynolds joins from Athletics Northern Ireland, where he served as Performance Pathway Lead, and has been closely involved in the development of international medallist Kate O’Connor.
The expansion of the field events coaching team will also allow existing Field Event Lead David Sweeney to devote more time to developing Irish throwing disciplines.
Further investment through Sport Ireland’s pathway funding has enabled the appointment of Shane Ryan as Pathway Strength and Conditioning Lead. Ryan holds a PhD in Health Science and lectures within the Physical Education and Sport Sciences department at the University of Limerick.
Athletics Ireland Performance Director Paul McNamara said the appointments reflected the ambition of the organisation’s long-term strategy.
“Through our High-Performance Strategy, we have committed to ambitious and challenging targets as we seek to continuously evolve the programme as we build towards LA 2028 and beyond, underpinned by an athlete-centred, performance-focussed, coach-driven philosophy,” said McNamara.
“Capacity-building has been a focus for us, and we are delighted with the calibre of our recent appointments, all of whom are steeped in performance athletics and who are already contributing to our performance goals. Sport Ireland’s continued and enhanced investment is a strong endorsement of our strategy for performance coaching.”
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Image Credit: Cricket Ireland and Sportsfile
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