Darren Flynn and Martin Golden claim Gerry Coleman tournament title for Ballymote-Collooney pairing

The Collooney club hosted the annual Gerry Coleman tournament on Bank Holiday Monday last and it was another great day's sport. As in previous years the handball code was three wall played on the blue one-wall ball and a total of twenty handballers, seeded into ten doubles parings, from every county in the province took part. First round casualties included Francis McCann and Sarah Coleman and Collooney club duo Gearoid Conway and Abbey Gallagher. There were quarter-final wins for Leitrim duo, Ed Lee and Maxim Gilmartin over defending champions, Caeleb and Keith Donnellan of Galway, local duos Darren Flynn and Martin Golden over Andoni Oskoz and Clive Slevin, Travis Gibbons and Michael Bruen over Eoghan Grehan and Bobby Cavanagh and Michael and Alannagh Corrigan. In the semi-final, Flynn and Golden accounted for Lee and Gilmartin and Gibbons and Bruen defeated the Corrigan father and daughter paring. The excellent final saw victory going to the Ballymote-Collooney paring of Darren Flynn and Martin Golden over Gibbons and Corley. While the day had, by nature a strong competitive element, many were just happy to honour the memory of Gerry Coleman. Darren Flynn, Bobby Cavanagh, Travis Gibbons, Gearoid Conway. A number a Sligo handballers made the trip to the Kilglass Gaels centre in Co. Roscommon over the weekend to take place in the Connacht One-Wall Championship which hosted the underage competitions on Saturday and the adult qualifiers and finals on Sunday last. Collooney's Bobby Cavanagh featured in the Boy's U14 even and he battled his way through to the quarter-finals, where he was beaten by Roscommon's Patrick Farrell in two straight games, 15-7, 15-8. In the Boys Minor, Travis Gibbons showed his dominance throughout the competition, claiming the Minor title in style. Travis defeated Leitrim's Gary Cox in the final in two straight games, 15-6, 15-3. In the Masters, Abbeylara native and Ballisodare resident, Darren Flynn recorded an excellent quarter-final victory over the fancied Jason Kelly from Galway and followed that up with an impressive win over John Coggeran from the host club in his semi-final only to lose out to the reigning all-Ireland four wall doubles champion, Ollie Cassidy from the Swinford club in the final on a 15-11, 15-6 scoreline. One final memorable success for a lesser known Sligo handballer, Gearoid Conway of the Collooney club, in the Men's Junior C singles grade where he defeated Logan Green of Galway in his semi-final before accounting for Mark Henegan of Mayo in the final on a 15-14, 15-12 scoreline, to secure his first ever provincial medal.