John Finnegan Leitrim Sports Person of the Year

Sligo Lawn Tennis Club badminton player is named as Leitrim Sportsperson of the Year 2013.

John Finnegan, at just 16 years old, scooped the overall Sports Person of the Year prize at the Leitrim Sports Partnership awards recently. John had been nomination for the Juvenile Sportsperson award which was a first for a badminton player. His selection for the overall award has given recognition and a real boost to racket sports.

John comes from Aughavas in County Leitrim. In the summer of 2012 he began to travel to Sligo to play and occasionally to be coached by Jonathon Dolan, one of the top Under 19 players in the world. He trained all through the summer of 2012 and at the start of the 2012/13 season became a member of Sligo Lawn Tennis Club. He then began to travel the 180 km round trip twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday nights, to play against some of the top club players in the country as well as competing every weekend. As a result of joining the club John started making it to the final stages of Juvenile Open competitions. In October 2012 he made it onto the national Under 17 squad to train for competition in Barcelona. ‘It was brilliant all I wanted to do was make it onto the squad as you have to be at least in the top 10 players to make it. It’s funny though, because once I made the squad I began to think about making it onto the team to travel to Spain’.

John began to enter Senior A Open competitions and with some notable victories by Christmas 2012 had managed to get himself ranked in the top 25 senior singles players on the island. In January 2013 he was named on the team to play in Barcelona. ‘I couldn’t believe it, I kept thinking that there are so many good players out there and they must have forgotten to include someone’ However, John dispelled any doubts about his inclusion in the team at the end of January when he defeated two of his national teammates in the Leinster Open Under 17 singles.

When the team travelled to Spain, John registered his first win in international singles. In doubles he and fellow SLT club-mate Jack O’Brien, were the only Irish boys to make it out of the group stages of the competition. In the knockout rounds they reached the quarter finals.

In terms of representing the SLT badminton club John played doubles on the Division 1 team that won the 2013 Connacht title and were then runners up in the All-Ireland club final.

With the Leaving Cert coming up in 2014 John is cutting back on training and the number of competitions he is playing at the moment but fully intends to continue to play for SLT badminton club in the New Year.  He would like to thank all those in Sligo Lawn Tennis Club that have encouraged him and made it possible for him to train and play at such a high level.