At the start of what may well be an historic week for Fermanagh sport the county's young athletes got things off to a flying start with two more Irish titles and three medals in all to bring their total for this year's Woodies national age group championships to an impressive seven gold and three silver medals.

Conditions in Tullamore on Sunday morning were ideal for athletics for the first time in several weeks and all present took the opportunity to avail of the warm day conditions to produces some top class athletics with huge fields in most of the events. Niall Cullen dropped down in distance to the 1500m and while he found the pace quick he was rewarded with a personal best of 4.14.99, a time he will look to clip a few more seconds off before going to the UK school games in late August, where he will compete over 3000m. Niall McKeever, just back after a month out with a broken arm just failed to make the U15 200m final by 3/100th while Conal Mahon interrupted his Gaeltacht trip to compete in the U16 Triple Jump where he finished sixth.

It was however very much Stuart Connor's day as the powerful and rapidly improving St. Michael's athlete set a series of personal bets in the U16 shot, culminating in a 5th round effort of 14.62m, a performance which brought him a silver medal just nineteen centimeters behind his great rival at this level Marco Pons from Wexford. In between rounds of that shot competition Connor had clocked a big personal best of 23.11 in comfortably winning his heat of the 200m and a couple of hours later he returned to dominate the final, putting clear daylight between himself and Dundrum South Dublin's Joseph Dowling who had edged Connor by 1/100th in the 100m eight days previous. Connor's time of 22.96 was yet another personal best, meaning that already this season he has knocked over two seconds off his time in the 200m, and puts him in the enviable position of being the number one ranked athlete in Ulster for Celtic Games selection in three events.

Gerard Maguire has been dominating sprinting in his age group at these championships since 2005 and the Belleek lad, a pupil at Erne Integrated College, built on his confident U17 100m victory from Antrim last weekend by adding his first 200m title since 2006. He cruised through his heat and a very impressive bend in the final put him in pole position to hold off the fast finishing Tailteann Games champion Lorcan O'Cathain of Roscommon and Mark Kavanagh of DSD to win his ninth national sprint gold medal in yet another personal best of 22.63.

Maguire and Ciaran Dolan will head to Bedford on Friday where they will both be part of the Irish schools team who will contest the Schools International Board U17 championships on Saturday afternoon. Maguire will compete in the 100m and the 4 x 100m relay team while Dolan has opted out of the Triple Jump to focus on the Long Jump, the event where he won the AAA's U15 title just twelve months ago.

Both athletes are part of the remarkable total of five Fermanagh boys, four from St. Michael's College, selected for the Northern Ireland team for the UK schools games in Bath in the end of August where they will be joined by Cullen, Connor and Daniel Walsh in another remarkable indication of the strength of this age group locally following another impressive day for Fermanagh sport and particularly Fermanagh athletics.