This talented student has risen to the very top of her sport - and she’s been rewarded for her efforts with a unique scholarship from Liverpool Hope University.
Niamh Skelly is a Sport Psychology student at Hope, and in the first year of her undergraduate degree.
But what her fellow students might not realise is that Niamh is something of a star back in her home county in Ireland, having played in front of hundreds of spectators for Donegal Ladies Gaelic Football Association.
This is the very elite level for Niamh’s sport. And her achievements have been acknowledged by Hope with the fact she receives a £1,000-a-year Sports-Related Performance Scholarship to help her both academically and on the pitch.
(Niamh in blue, right, with the ball)
Niamh says: “I got into Gaelic Football when I was around 12 years old, when a brand new development programme for girls was launched. You could say we were guinea pigs.
“And then the sport just took over my life. I played between the ages of 13 and 18 at County level for Donegal and then also played for club side Moville, which is one of the top competitors in ladies football in Donegal.”
When Niamh played for the Under 18s, she won the County Title for five years in a row between 2013 and 2018.
She’s now playing for the senior side at Moville GAA back in Ireland, while she’s also joined a club in Liverpool - John Mitchels GAA, based at the Greenbank Sports Academy and located a stone’s throw from the city’s famous Sefton Park.
For John Mitchels, Niamh helped her side win the Lancashire Championship last year while also reaching the semi-final of the All Britain competition.
Niamh is a tough midfielder - and says the role requires both strength and stamina, as it’s a position that demands a lot of running.
She laughs: “If you don’t know much about Gaelic Football, the way I describe it to people is that it’s a cross between rugby and football.
“But luckily here at Hope there’s a thriving GAA community and a lot of us come over to Liverpool from Ireland because we know that so many other students have followed the same path.
“It really is like a home from home.
“At Hope we have our Gaelic Football team but we also have a social team, which is for people from back home who don’t actually play the game but still want to be part of the community.
“There are social nights, fundraisers, and other events to get as many people involved as we can.”
Niamh and her group must be doing something right - they won the university league for Hope this year.
And she’s currently training up to six days a week - with ‘no room for error with everyone fighting for their position’ - as she prepares for the inter-university Championship. This is an intense knock-out tournament being held in Manchester in April.
Meanwhile Niamh says her playing career and her academic studies perfectly complement each other.
She adds: “Through my years at County, we had strength and conditioning coaching, nutritionists and even sports psychologists coming in to help us during pre-season.
“It gave me a great insight into sport, teaching me that you can’t perform well without having a good mindset or without getting your diet right. You need everything to come together.
“Initially, when I was considering degree options, I wasn’t looking at a sport-related programme at all. I was actually considering accountancy, at the opposite end of the spectrum!
“But before coming to university I took a year out and also began coaching an under-14s Gaelic Football team. I started to think more and more about studying Sport Psychology.
“And I’m glad I chose Hope. The Scholarship has been so helpful, particularly as students from Ireland don’t get the same level of student loan compared with students from England.”
Niamh says prospects for other young women looking to play Gaelic Football are looking good.
She reveals: “There’s a lot more interest in ladies GAA now than there was a few years ago, and a lot of the coaches from the men’s teams are moving to the women’s sport.
“It’s great that we’re starting to get as much recognition as the men.”
When she graduates, Niamh hopes to become a professional sports psychologist while also carrying on playing for as long as she can.
e