SARAH COLLINS HAS been award the Female Scholar Athlete of the Year at Providence College.
The awards were confirmed yesterday evening by the Big East Conference with cross country stand-out Collins, who runs under Finn Valley AC’s banner, confirmed as Providence’s female award winner.
Finn Valley’s Patsy McGonagle, the Irish Athletics Team Manager, has said Collins ‘is the best young prospect I’ve seen in 40 years’ and the Cork-born athlete is living up to her billing.
Collins has earned four All-American honours with three of them – in 2012, 2013 and 2015 – in cross country and the other in 5,000m.
In late 2015, she returned from a lengthy injury lay-off to win individual and team gold with Providence at the Big East Cross Country in Mason, Ohio, going on to finish second in the North East Region Cross Country.
She finished 20th and was the lead Providence athlete to take All-American honours in November at Tom Sawyer State Park in Louisville, Kentucky.
Collins is coached by Ray Treacy at Providence College in Rhode Island and she broke Sonia O’Sullivan’s Irish Junior 5,000m record when she set 15:41.00 in Boston in 2013.
In 2014, she set a new Irish Junior 10,000m record with a time of 33:33.36 at Villanova.
She is the fourth fastest Irish woman indoors, behind Sonia O’Sullivan, Mary Cullen and Maria Davenport.
