Dublin’s Kate Whyte back in action after a bout of meningitis

Playing in Croke Park may be the summit of one of her sporting dreams but Kate Whyte got a great kick recently out of dangling off the top of it on a rope.

Life-threatening illness tends to make you grab life with both hands and squeeze but Whyte actually needed no extra encouragement to abseil from the Hogan Stand for charity.

She plays camogie for Lucan Sarsfields and Dublin and has been a four-handicap golfer since she was 18.

Her talents earned her a dual sports scholarship at NUI Maynooth which, since 2006, has had a golf academy linked to the GUI and Carton House.

But, given the past year and her final exams in business and management next month, Whyte is concentrating on just elite camogie at present.

She celebrated her 21st birthday a month ago with a new appreciation for life because, a year ago, she was hit by a terrifying illness.

On a regular Saturday last March she went to bed with flu-like symptoms and, once her parents returned home and checked her that night, they were immediately alarmed.

When they turned on the light the glare sent her crazy.

“Then my mam asked me to take a drink to swallow a Nurofen and when I couldn’t bend my neck that triggered the alarm bells.”

They rushed her to hospital where she had a lumbar puncture and was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis.

It is an illness mostly associated with toddlers and strikes out of the blue.

“My temperature was up in the mid-40s. I was so lucky that my mum and dad were so switched on. The consultants have said that if I had not gone to hospital immediately I wouldn’t be here at all now.”

Whyte spent three weeks in hospital, missed a month of college and almost half a camogie season.

Year off

She was advised to take a whole year away from sport to recuperate but simply couldn’t bear that.

Her club and county teammates were a huge support during her illness and she couldn’t wait to get back with them.

“I still went to every training session, even just to throw the balls back to the girls. After my exams in June I started back and I togged out by the end of the championship.

“The lumbar puncture had damaged nerves in my lower back so I was very nervous with striking and puck-outs and contact in general,” she explains.

“It wasn’t like I was going back to Junior A or B. Inter-county is hard-hitting, it’s not tippy-tappy, and I’d been out for four months.”

Golf has long been the other string to Whyte’s bow.

“I did all sports when I was younger and after I won an All-Ireland in pitch-and-putt Johnny’s McCaffrey’s mam asked me to try golf.

“We won the All-Ireland four-ball with Lucan when I was 15, there was actually another girl on the team who was only 13.”

However, trying to combine both sports and college just became a stretch too far this season.

“Two years ago I was very competitive at golf but it involved a lot of travelling abroad and at home,” she says.

Number one

“I remember competing in the European Club in Wicklow one day and driving straight back up for county training. I got back down there between 1-2am and played another round the next morning. Eventually I had to choose and camogie’s my number one at the moment.

“I don’t know how much the skills transfer. The mental side and pace is so different but a lot of people say my drive comes from my puck-out,” she laughs.

She still plays golf whenever she gets the chance and is never short of a quality partner as her boyfriend Alan Lowry (22) is Shane's younger brother and won the Mullingar Scratch Cup last year.

But it is camogie that command’s all of Whyte’s efforts at present.

As Dublin’s second-choice goalkeeper she is now back trying to wrestle the number one jersey off of her friend Sheila Cotter.

Dublin, caught up in that coin-toss saga, were eventually only three points shy of an All-Ireland semi-final last year and their 2016 Leinster opener is against Kildare in a fortnight.

Lucan, for whom she plays corner-forward, were also pipped in their first county senior final last year and want to push on.

Whyte is especially keen now to raise awareness of meningitis, especially in adults.

“It’s not common for people of my age but you can get it,” she stresses. “I didn’t have the rash but did have the stiff neck which is often a clue.”

She is one of the players who will feature in an upcoming initiative by the Women’s Gaelic Players’ Association (WGPA) in conjunction with the Headstrong charity.

Their ‘Be You – Belong’ campaign will underline the diversity of players within women’s Gaelic teams and how they support each other no matter what life throws at them – something which Whyte experienced first-hand in 2015.

Me bedside

“I learnt just how good my family and friends are really. My mam and dad lived by my bedside for three weeks and the girls from club, college and Dublin all dropped in. They were all just so good to me.”

The only physical residue left by the disease is a slight problem with her ears.

“It’s like I’m up in a plane permanently. They say it should go eventually but if that’s all I have to put up with after meningitis I’m doing pretty well.”