Why they won: All the winners from the Donegal Sports Star Awards profiled

There were five winners of the Special Athlete category - Anna Hennessy, Daniel O'Reilly, David Crawford, Hughie Sweeney and Vicki McGill, pictured above.
Vicki McGill, from Letterkenny, had a week to remember at the 2023 World Summer Games in Berlin. A member of the North West Special Olympics club Vicki won a gold medal in basketball.
A total of 16 local Ulster athletes came back with 22 medals. Vicki McGill was a member of a 73-strong Team Ireland, which won a total of 75 medals at the global games finals in a range of sports including badminton, basketball, equestrian, golf and gymnastics.
The standout moment for Anna Hennessy in 2023 was reaching the qualifying standard for World Championships which take place in March. That happened for the Letterkenny woman after she performed very well last year at the European Down Syndrome Championships in Italy.
Anna recorded three PB times and got to one final. She clipped 12 seconds of her 100m Backstroke, five seconds of her 100m Butterfly and three seconds off her 50m Butterfly. Anna also did extremely well to get to the final of the 50m Backstroke. It was those results that gave her the qualifying times for the World Championships in Turkey. Anna is training hard now with the Swilly Seals Club in Letterkenny before heading to Turkey in March where we wish her the best of luck.
Daniel, David and Hughie had the great honour of representing Ireland at the European Down Syndrome Futsal Tournament last September in Italy. So Donegal was very well represented in the eight-man squad.
Letterkenny man Daniel O’Reilly made history when he scored Ireland’s first ever Down Syndrome Futsal goal. The striker showed some neat footwork against the hosts Italy to slot home the Ireland goal that has put Daniel into the history books.
Donegal Town man David Crawford was the goalkeeper and had a super tournament as did another forward Hughie Sweeney from Gweedore.