Thank you to all of our wonderful members, volunteers, coaches, staff, stakeholder partners and everyone in-between who attended, helped out or contributed in any way to a successful year! We’ve had a bumper year of activities, programmes and events connecting even more people across the country to sports and activities of their choice. It’s been a historic year – from the first vision impaired rugby game played on the island of Ireland, to another record breaking MayFest, and doubling the number of participants at Zero Limits.
We’ve started more programmes across the country with our hub in Portlaoise proving hugely successful. Portlaoise now hosts swimming, football, athletics and golf with programmes being held across the year offering a wider variety of choice to our members in that area.
We have also expanded our offerings in other locations across the country. On the back of IBSA Games, where our Irish tennis team represented our country with pride on the world stage, we have added Athlone, Castlebar and Tralee to our tennis offerings which brings our total number of Blind/VI tennis programmes to 12.
Our swimming hubs in Dublin and Portlaoise have remained hugely popular with our newest programme in Cavan beginning in November. A new football programme in Meath was also introduced in 2023 adding to our programmes in Portlaoise and Dublin.
We trained up Guide runners in Navan, Portlaoise and Carlow, held Tandem Pilot courses in Cork and Kildare and hosted monthly Vision Sports Awareness training sessions where we educated clubs, volunteers and coaches with practical information when coaching someone with a vision impairment.
Our flagship events of Zero Limits and MayFest proved to be as popular as ever and we were delighted to welcome new members to both events, giving even more people the chance to try different sports and experience the thrill of rallying around Mondello Rack Track.
2023 has been a busy and successful year, we hope our members enjoyed it as much as we did. Now roll on 2024!