Clodagh Finn: The library assistant with an Olympic string to her bow

She continued to work as a library assistant by day in the then-NIHE (National Institute of Higher Education) Limerick, but spent her spare time honing a skill that brought her to competitions all around the world.

She competed at the World Archery Championships the year before the Olympics, but doesn’t make much of it now.

There were other competitions too. She recalls the travel, the airports and being “frozen to the bone” in the fields where the shooting took place, but she is entirely blase about her rapidly improving scores.

She does admit, however, that she was “a bit competitive” — not so much competing with others, but always trying to improve on her own performance.

In 1984, a number of Irish archers qualified for the Olympics, but Ireland could not afford to send a big team in a minority sport, so the archery federation set a higher qualification level.

Just two archers made the grade — Hazel Greene and Mary Vaughan. They were among 47 archers from 24 countries who competed in the 1984 Olympics.

“It was a marvellous experience,” Mary says, recalling the acclimatisation in San Diego, the training, and the competition itself which ran for four days at the end of the Games.

She didn’t shoot her best scores but, as founder of the modern Olympics Pierre de Coubertin said: “The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”

Having said that, it’s interesting to note that the first Irishwoman to win an Olympic medal was archer Beatrice Hill-Lowe from Ardee, Co Louth.

It’s also worth remembering that she was almost 40 years old when she shot her way into the record books on a scorching hot day at the White City Stadium in London in 1908. She won a bronze medal and a certificate, which came up for auction in the UK last March.

The County Museum, Dundalk, made a bid for it, but it went for well over the guiding price of £150, so they didn’t buy it. The museum, however, has Beatrice’s medal, her silver quiver, and yardage book.

While Beatrice Hill-Lowe competed for Great Britain — there was no Irish team in 1908 — she considered herself Irish.

And archery was considered a suitable sport for women, says museum curator Brian Walsh. It was genteel and graceful and women could take part without breaking a sweat. They could simply glow.

Women had been admitted to the Games eight years before, in 1900, in 1904, women’s archery was added. If that signalled change, it was slow and halting. Around the same time, women were warned that cycling could leave them with a condition known as “bicycle face”, an imagined affliction that led to, horror of horrors, flushed cheeks, a hard, clenched jaw, and bulging eyes.

That was one way of discouraging women from adopting a new form of transport that would change everything. To quote an 1896 article in the American publication Munsey’s Magazine: “To men, the bicycle… was merely a new toy… To women, it was a steed upon which they rode into a new world.” In that new world, Beatrice Hill-Lowe’s sporting achievement paved the way for others, even if it was the last time she competed at such a level.

Back in Limerick, though, Mary Vaughan continued to practice her sport. She slotted right back into the day job and continued to compete at national, European, and world level at weekends.

Some of her experiences have been recorded, in her own words, as part of the University of Limerick (UL) oral history project. (The NIHE was finally granted university status in 1989).

The many other stories of that institution are told in fascinating detail in University of Limerick, An Oral History, 1972-2022 by Martin Walsh, project officer for the Oral History Project at UL and a historian who has done invaluable work bringing the lives of working-class women out of the shadows.

In the book, Mary Vaughan also captures the sea-change in technology that took place between 1973 and her retirement in 1993: “So, during the time I was in the library it went from paper to microfiche, which means probably nothing to most people. And then to DOS-based computer system, and eventually Windows-based. And I have no idea what it is based on now... Quantum mechanics of some description!”

At a time when the media focus has been on the governance of UL, it is timely to be reminded of the true fabric of universities — the people who work and study in them.

Their hopes and dreams sing out from the pages of Walsh’s book. Among them is a rather canny entry from Professor Brigid Laffan, who was appointed UL chancellor last November. In 1972, she remembers the moment her headmistress distributed leaflets about higher-level courses to her Leaving Cert class.

“It was effectively a tiny brochure talking about the establishment of a new course, European Studies in a new institution, NIHE Limerick… I know immediately if something’s right. And I remember saying to myself, ‘I’m going to go there’ and it was immediate.”

There is another great Olympics story in the book, told by administrator Mary Smith. When Seanie McGrath competed in the Seoul Paralympics in 1988, winning a swimming bronze, it clashed with his graduation. On the day he arrived home, he was helicoptered to the ceremony where he got a standing ovation.

“His mum and auntie had brought the suit for the occasion,” Mary recalled, “but the shoes could not be found so he has the distinction of being the only student to graduate in a pair of runners.”

To return to Mary Vaughan: now aged 71, she doesn’t do archery any more, but that does not mean she is not keen to add another string to her bow. When she was in LA in 1984, she got the chance to visit a naval base where she took the controls at a flight simulator. It didn’t end well, the imagined flight went into San Francisco Bay.

Learning to fly a real plane, though, is on her bucket list. She lives near Coonagh airport in Limerick and is used to hearing the planes — ‘the Coonaghs’, as she calls them — flying overhead. She hopes to fly one someday.

If the Olympics (and indeed the university) is about taking part, it is also about dreaming. And Mary Vaughan is still doing that. We’ll keep you posted.