Sports award for world junior gold medallist

Moate boxing sensation Joe Ward, the winner of a gold medal in the World Junior Championships, has been chosen as the winner of the Westmeath Independent sports star award for the month of June. Ward brought home a gold medal from the AIBA World Junior Championships in Armenia. Joe secured the gold medal when he stopped local favourite Hayk Khachatryan in the third round of the light-middleweight (70kg) final. "I boxed brilliantly in the final. I knew I had to be at my best because (Khachatryan) had the crowd on his side," recalled Joe. The win in Armenia is the high point of a young career which has also included a gold at the President's Cup multi-nation tournament in Azerbaijan earlier this year, a bronze at the 2008 European Junior Championships and a silver at the European Schoolboy Championships. While Joe said he benefited from working with the Irish Amateur Boxing Association's (IABA) High Performance Programme, the 15-year-old paid particular tribute to his trainer at Moate Boxing Club, Seamus Dorrington. "Seamus is a very good coach and he has been looking after me ever since I first went into the club as a young fella," he said. Looking ahead, Joe said his next aim was to qualify for and compete at the inaugural Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in the summer of 2010. He then hopes to compete at the London Olympics two years later. Joe, who turns 16 in the coming days, is currently looking to fighting for Ireland in a multi-nation competition in Dublin.