SPECIAL FEATURE
Micheal O Muircheartaigh with Aisling and her parents Sally and Matty Conaty
AISLING ELECTRIFIED BY ALL-IRELAND WIN
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ast year’s All-Ireland junior ‘A’ camogie triumph was a career highlight for Aisling Conaty who’s now challenging her Westmeath team-mates to use the success as a stepping stone to greater things. September 2 2012 was a red-letter day for Westmeath camogie. After many years of trying and the heartbreak of losing the previous year’s final to Armagh after a replay, the Lake County finally got their hands on the coveted Nancy Murray Cup following a superb 1-14 to 2-6 victory over Dublin at the Donaghmore/Ashbourne club grounds in Co. Meath. The success capped a memorable year in which Westmeath’s U16 team also claimed an All-Ireland ‘C’ title, Castletown-Geoghegan’s Aoife Corcoran won the All-Ireland Feile Skills competition and St. Munna’s
Aileen Lawlor became the county’s first Camogie Association president. Little wonder then that everyone was in such high spirits at the Westmeath Camogie Awards Night in the Annebrook House Hotel, Mullingar on January 5 last! “It was a great way to ring in the New Year,” laughs Aisling Conaty, who was selected at centre back on the Westmeath Examiner Readers’ All Star Team of the Year after a fantastic season in the colours of Lough Lene Gaels and Westmeath. “Micheal O Muircheartaigh was the special guest and presented the U16 team with their All-Ireland medals. He nicknamed me ‘Vision’ because that’s what Aisling means in Irish, and it’s stuck to me which is pretty flattering. We received our All-Ireland junior medals from Aileen Lawlor who has done so much to raise camogie’s profile in Westmeath. I’ve been on the Westmeath panel for the past six
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years and last year was definitely the highlight. “I captained the team to win a National League Division 4 title in 2011 and to an All-Ireland final against Armagh, which we lost after a replay. Westmeath won an All-Ireland junior 12-a-side championship in 2006, but I missed that year to concentrate on my studies. So it was great to finally win an All-Ireland title with such a brilliant bunch of girls,” adds Aisling, who was part of a committee that organised the Awards Night. The long-serving defender is fulsome in her praise of last year’s manager Noel Boyce and his backroom team which comprised Yvette Cully, Mark Scally, Seamus Sheridan and Ian Fivey. Yvette has replaced Noel as manager for the coming year and Aisling sees no reason why Westmeath can’t reach even greater heights under the