Newcestown teen Jane Buckley races to Big East win in US

NEWCESTOWN athlete Jane Buckley is turning heads in the States.

The 19-year-old rising athletics star only left West Cork in mid-August to begin her scholarship at Providence College in Rhode Island, but she’s already making a name for herself. 

At the BIG EAST Cross-Country Championships, held at the Highland Park Course in Attleboro, Massachusetts on Saturday, Jane showed why she is one of the top young athletes to emerge from West Cork in recent times as she won the women’s 6k race with a time of 20:06.

She is only the second freshman to win the women’s race, with the first, Michele Hallett of Boston College, winning the title back in 1982, well before Jane was even born.

It also means that the Newcestown teen is the first-ever Providence College freshman to win this BIG EAST cross-country title, which is competed for by colleges from the east coast. 

What a way to announce her arrival on the competitive American collegiate circuit.

‘It was amazing. I wasn't expecting that to be honest because this was my first BIG EAST competition,’ Buckley told her college’s website, friars.com. ‘I've only ran three races here so far. This one was definitely different because in the last two races there were 400 people, so it was nice.’

Jane finished two seconds in front of last year’s champion, Maggie Donahue from Georgetown. Her heroics helped Providence women’s cross-country team finish second out of 11 teams.

The former Bandon AC runner enjoyed a stunning breakthrough year with Leevale AC in 2021, as she won gold in both the Autumn Open Cross-Country and the U20 women’s race at the national cross-country championships before then representing Ireland at the European Cross-Country Championships.