The Girls Go Games Team are Champions!

Today, we finally had our medal ceremony for our amazing Girls Go Games Team who won the Girls Go Games League way back in October! This incredibly talented group of young Gaelic Footballers went undefeated for four matches straight and were thoroughly deserving of having their achievement celebrated today! A massive thank you must also be extended to Mr. Behan and Ms. Molony for coaching the girls and guiding them to the title! (They are the only coaches in the school that have never been beaten!!!)

Both teachers were so impressed by the girls in every match and the girls really seemed to love having them as their coaches! Hopefully, many of them will be eager to try and make it 3 in a row when the competition starts again in September and you never know, maybe a few of the girls will make the step up to the Senior team too!

We must also take this opportunity to acknowledge the wonderful sporting achievements of the children of our school this past year! For the first time ever, we had two teams (our boys and girls) playing in Croke Park last October in the Cumann na mBunscol Cup finals. It was a very special occasion for everyone involved and though we didn't come out the right side of the results, we are very proud of how the children competed on the day and hopefully the experience will live long in the memory. The epic semi-final wins certainly will live long in the memory anyway!

Our Camóige team were very unlucky to be in a very strong group which ultimately produced the two finalists in Croker but Ms. Durkin, Ms. Reynolds and Ms. McDonell were all very impressed with our girls and can really see the makings of a great team in the next few years as there is some serious talent coming through and many of the girls are still very young! Our boys reached the semi-final of the hurling competition and were devastated to miss out on a chance to play in Croker but this is a very young team (90% of them were either Fourth or Fifth Class) and they've made huge progress in the space of a year so there's no doubt the boys and their coaches Mr. Whelan and Mr. Scott will be eager to try and go at least one better next year! Needless to say, we are always delighted when we hear that a new child has joined our local GAA club, Round Towers as it generally bodes well for our school teams!

Our Boys' Soccer team had a great year! They reached the quarter-final of the Pegasus Cup and only lost narrowly to the eventual winners St. Anne's. The boys 5 a side team actually reached the final of the Dublin FAI 5 a side competition (and won medals for doing so) only losing by the narrowest of margins (one goal). These boys gave their coaches Mr. Rafter and Mr. Walsh tremendous excitement over the past few months and there are certainly a few that we can see playing at a very high level in years to come! The girls also had a superb year. Only one school managed to get the a win against us in the 11 a side all year and our Fourth and Fifth Class team reached the Dublin finals of the Fai 5 a side competition.

In Athletics, we had huge numbers from Third to Sixth taking part in the Cross Country Races which had about 15 other schools participating too. There was huge enthusiasm for this event (especially amongst the younger classes) and everyone who competed at the races did themselves proud. We even had a few winners! We also recently put up a post about our Athletics team who competed at the Santry Athletics Championships which was another fantastic day that made our chief! We had a 600 metre silver medalist and three relay teams that reached the final so Mr. Stevenson's and Ms. Kearns' hard work coaching the team certainly seemed to pay off!

We must also take this opportunity to pay tribute to our wonderful Sixth Class children who will be leaving us tomorrow! All the teachers agree that they were such a pleasure to coach and they really lead by example on and off the sporting field and should be so proud of themselves for what they have achieved here in Sruleen. They will be greatly missed but we will always be eager to keep an eye out on their progress in their sporting, artistic and academic endeavours!

Finally, the Gaelic Football season will be starting pretty much immediately when we return to school in September so we encourage all our players to keep practicing and working on their skills over the summer! Mr. Flynn will be eager to get going straight away with the boys as he was more excited than anyone about the trip to Croker the last time! Ms. O'Donovan has been a huge driving force behind girls sport in the school and a massively positive influence on our girls teams for years now. However, this coming season will be the first GAA season she will miss in a very long time but I hope that only makes the girls even more determined to give her something to cheer about! We also hope to see lots of new players stepping up to both the Boys and Girls Go Games teams as it's a great competition for giving younger kids a chance to play for the school for the first time. (Although we have so many players now, the competition for places will be very tough indeed!)

In the meantime, we hope everybody has a fantastic summer and we encourage you all to stay active!