Rena McCarron Rooney ready for Rio Paralympics

Rena McCarron Rooney will travel to her second Paralympics in Rio, representing Ireland in table tennis. The Buncrana-born, Galway-based woman is ranked in the top 10 in the world in the TT2 category – the grading parameters stretch from T1 to T5 for those who are in a wheelchair, T6-T10 standing and T11 for those with an intellectual disability.

Her classification is specified as “no sitting balance with severe reduction of function in the playing arm.” McCarron Rooney has to strap the bat in her right hand and because of balance issues is also secured in the chair. An accomplished sportswoman, the genesis of her table tennis career was forged from one moment of tragic adversity and a serendipitous encounter.

Her life changed in 1979 when as a 15-year-old she was involved in a car accident. “When you are that age you don’t think about things. I was in hospital for about a year and returned home, just got on with it really. I never missed school. I was in Scoil Mhuire in Buncrana. They were really, really helpful and kind. I had one teacher then Con Rigley, who did fundraising.

‘Driving lessons’

“They actually got me into a Renault 5 which was fabulous. I could start getting driving lessons. They are my memories from back then, just got on with it, wanted to get back to school, go to college and do all the things that everyone else was doing. During her time in the National Rehabilitation Hospital (NRH) in Dún Laoghaire “they introduced us to sports for recreation and rehabilitation. I would have dabbled in basketball, archery and table tennis.

“Then I went back to Donegal and there wasn’t anyone else in a chair in Donegal that I knew. There weren’t many sports happening and Donegal is so remote. Even when I went to college, I lived in Galway and there wasn’t that much happening in sports in Galway nearly 30-years ago.”

After finishing college – she has a degree in Spanish and Italian – she worked in the students union in NUI Galway for 15 years. More recently she was employed by Irish Wheelchair Sport as a Sport Development Officer for the West of Ireland.

‘Get involved’

She was proactive in facilitating sport for children with disabilities. “It gave me an idea. There were other kids in the Galway area with physical disabilities who would be finding it difficult to get involved in sports because I remembered my own experience.

“Along with some parents we set up the Galway Speeders Sports club for kids with disabilities. It was something I wanted to do because of my own struggles. Sport is fantastic for people with disabilities because it opens so many doors, you meet so many people and you are competing for the sake of sport. Everything else is forgotten.

“We do all sports. We have fantastic coaches that all volunteer their time in basketball, kayaking, swimming and table tennis. We have a structure where we don’t try and reinvent the wheel, instead try and plug into existing clubs, get them to embrace and involve our kids in their groups. Normally it works great, it takes very little extra to make a provision for those kids to take part.”

Her own sporting pathway and indeed life was changed utterly by a chance meeting with her husband Ronan in the NRH. “I met him when he was rehabilitating in Dun Laoghaire. He was a veterinary student and he is still involved with the hospital’s sports club. We lost contact for a number of years, and then met at a sporting event two years later and took it from there.

“I didn’t have a choice [about playing table tennis],” she laughs. “He needed a training partner because even back then there weren’t that many people in a wheelchair playing table tennis. It has worked out really well. He is a brilliant coach, because he competed at the highest level for so many years. He is a fantastic strategist and tactician.

“Last year he changed my training routine. We were working with the Institute of Sport and changed to a two-peak strategy. I was travelling to Dublin every week and going to eight international competitions. In conjunction with the Institute of Sport we changed my regime making it more scientific. A lot of it is down to him, I have to do the work but it is a good combination. I really have great confidence in him.”

To fully appreciate the rigours and demands of playing table tennis in a wheelchair, it’s instructive to experience it firsthand. For those who have played the sport standing, the perspective is overwhelmingly different and difficult.

The chair has to be manoeuvred with one hand while playing with the other. The ball, largely at eye level and above renders it so difficult to discern and control spin. There are a couple of rules that differ most notably relating to what’s permitted with the serve, it’s game of nuance, angles, touch and manipulation rather than power.

McCarron Rooney won a silver medal at the European Para table tennis championships in 2015 and has medalled at various other tournaments in Europe as well as dominating the national championships. She has been playing internationally for 15 years and the sport for almost double that timeframe.

Perhaps a better indication of Rooney's prowess is that she trains at home in Bearna with two elite-level, able-bodied table tennis players in Cliff Rowe and Hiro Hakamada. They play in a wheelchair and it took them over a year of playing several times a week before they could even give her a game.

Rooney’s regular training partner and coach is her husband, Ronan, a six-time Paralympian, and the man who introduced her to the sport. She joked at one point that, with the two of them in wheelchairs, they had 300 table tennis balls at home to avoid having to constantly pick them up and that she was going to teach the cat to retrieve them.

‘Perform well’

Rio offers an opportunity but she points to the strength of the Koreans and Chinese in particular before adding: “I am really trying to focus on what I can do. All I want to do is perform well and I believe I will. If I do that, it’s a cliche but the results will take care of themselves.

“To be honest others don’t really have a clue about the standards (in my event) and the comments vary from, ‘I don’t have a chance,’ to ‘all I have to do is turn up and collect the medal’.

“My family can understand it, they have been supportive and fully appreciate the time and effort that goes into it. I do this for myself and my family.

“I am really proud to be a successful Irish sportswoman. I really admire women in sport. I really feel that I have arrived and am a successful, proud, Irish sportswoman. This brings me great satisfaction, confidence and comfort to keep doing what I doing.”