TENNIS INTERVIEW WITH CAITRÍONA RUANE:Sinn Féin Assembly member Caitríona Ruane recalls her successful tennis career

THE DÁIL has a long history of former county GAA players getting elected and moving on from the cut and thrust of Croke Park to the hand-to-hand combat of the leather-bound chamber. Sport, because of the profile that occasionally goes with it, has been a traditional route to launch political careers.

In the North, Caitríona Ruane has followed that tradition as a Sinn Féin Assembly Member and Minister for Education and although the traditions of GAA are a strong part of her background as a child growing up in Mayo, the MLA emerged, not from camogie or women's Gaelic football, but the world of tennis.

A former junior Wimbledon competitor and Irish Federation Cup player, as well as Ireland's Player of the Year in 1981, Ruane went on to turn professional and play on the tennis circuit for a number of years before immersing herself in human rights issues and politics. But it was in St Angela's and then Convent of Mercy, Castlebar that an enduring love of all sport flourished.

"In primary school we had no PE teacher and that was terrible," she remembers. "There was no one to teach fundamental skills. I was a tomboy and loved sports from when we lived in the Dublin mountains to moving to Mayo. Then in school I had the luck to have Ann Healy and Deirdre McGuinness as PE teachers.

"They were the best and did all the extra curricular stuff. Instead of going home after school they would be driving us here there and everywhere, to Swinford, to Galway. I was on the gymnastics team, the basketball team, the table tennis team, the tennis team . . .

"Looking back those teachers were so important in giving us the chance to play sport by giving up their time. When Ann said she was leaving the school I actually cried. In those days there were no showers or anything like that and I remember doing all sorts of sports at lunchtime and going into afternoon class with a big red face and still with my gear on underneath my clothes.

"What hooked me on tennis was that we got to the community games one year. What that meant was a free weekend in Butlins. Imagine that! So I practised everything, basketball, volleyball, tennis. In later years I went to play tennis all over the world but what I remember as perhaps the best time I had playing sport was that weekend in Butlins."

The promising young tennis player was then picked to play for Connacht in the senior interprovincial tournament when she was just 14. Galway Tennis Club saw the talent and stepped in to help as tennis was largely a summer sport that closed down for the winter.

"In one of the interpro tournaments in Clongowes, where the tournament was held, I beat a player from Ulster," says Ruane. "Nobody told me I wasn't supposed to win. I just remember this girl crying because she was beaten by a player from Connacht."

At 16, a scholarship to the USA arrived and a young, callow Ruane stepped on a plane and American soil for the first time. "I played tennis everyday in Connecticut and when I came home played in junior Wimbledon and got on the Federation Cup team. Wimbledon was a fantastic experience. The best was in the dressing rooms listening to players like Chris Evert talking about their match. Then at 17 before my Leaving Cert I went to Czechoslovakia and stayed for three weeks, played doubles against Hana Mandikova (who beat Martina Navratilova to with the US Open in 1985 and also won two Australian Opens in 1980, 1987 and a French Open title in 1981). What a beautiful tennis player she was."

Tennis was the life from 14 to 21 and in the end became too much. Returning home to coach, another chance to go to the US on a scholarship arrived but by then Ruane's focus and priorities were changing from sport to what she believed were more grave issues of the time.

"I went to the States but I wanted to go to El Salvador and Nicaragua. In my family there has always been a sense of social justice and I always wanted to work in the Third World. That was 1983 and I then went to work for the relief agency, Trócaire. The conflict was also raging at that time in Northern Ireland then and I came back to Ireland in 1987 and went to work as co-ordinator for Human Rights, Centre for Research and Documentation, Belfast and also the Columbia Three 'Bring them Home Campaign' ( a campaign to release three Irish prisoners who had been jailed in Colombia) and Sinn Féin asked me to work for them."

Now the Sinn Féin Assembly Member for South Down, those sport skills are occasionally used for more practical purposes. "At times when I'm in the Assembly and the darts are flying I think of volleying. I was a natural serve-volley player," she says. "What sport has taught me is to hang in when times are tough.

"In schools now what I believe in is giving kids confidence in their bodies at primary level, especially girls. The GAA are way ahead of the game in this area and they, along with the Irish Football Association, have employed 20 coaches to go into primary schools with funding from me to teach kids how to move and run so they have that sense of confidence at an early age. It's an 'opt in' scheme and the GAA just took the ball and ran with it."