Kerrie aiming to make her mark in Tokyo

PARALYMPICS Drumree archer selected to represent country

Drumree archer Kerrie Leonard who is preparing to travel to Tokyo to represent Ireland in the Paralympic Games says being selected to compete is a dream come true.

Thirty-year-old Kerrie from Culmullen will travel to the Japanese capital next month, an achievement that has been a culmination of dedication, talent and ambition since she began working towards qualifying for the games.

Speaking this week ahead of flying to Tokyo on 14th August she said: "It has been something I have been working towards for a number of years. When you start laying out exactly how long the journey has taken it is amazing to think that I am actually going. I had to keep it to myself for a few days, so it has only hit me since that announcement that it is actually happening."

Her passion for archery began in a number of local clubs including Kilcock and Drumree. After taking a break, she rediscovered her love for the sport in 2011.

"The decision to try to get to the games came after a couple of years, she syas. " In my case you are doing a sport, enjoying it and building up skills to get better and once I started to get a taste for competition and what it meant from a Para side of things then it gave me that push to try to qualify for the games, so it’s since about 2014/2015 that I have been putting in the work."

"I started archery in 2002 and I gave it up for a number of years. Then I took it back up in 2011 when I was in college, as a hobby. There was an invitational shoot in the UK in the run up to the London Olympics and Paralympics, so I got the opportunity to go to that, and then I didn’t really think about it too much until 2014 when I decided to go to my first European championships in Switzerland."

Kerrie, who has been a wheelchair user since the age of six, having been injured in a farm accident, says a natural competitive and determined nature has taken her this far.

"I’m just competitive by nature. When I went to my first European championship it didn’t go that successfully. It was a pretty difficult time for me, and I didn’t want to walk away from it at that stage on such a bad note. Then when I went to my next competition, I saw the potential that I had, and I wanted to see out that potential.”

She will compete at her first games after enduring a disrupted qualification campaign due to the Covid pandemic, that saw her opportunities to compete internationally become very limited.

She adds: "When I didn’t qualify for Rio and was so close to qualifying, I didn’t want that to be the full stop in the sentence, so I just pushed myself to qualify for the games."

A campaign has been started to raise money for extra equipment, physio and psychology sessions ahead of Kerrie competing in the Paralympic Games. To support search for 'Kerrie’s Trek to Tokyo' on GoFundMe.