Hurling/Iomáint in St. Mary’s
Hurling has grown massively as a sport in the last number of years in the St. Mary’s. At the beginning of we had an average of 2 boys in every class playing with a local club. We were struggling to field a senior team for league matches with many of the boys playing picking up a hurley out of a bag for the first time on match day.
Today we have an average of 10 children per year involved in a club with 2 junior teams and 1 senior team. Every class from 1st to 6th Class gets the opportunity to try out hurling throughout the school year. We have made it to Croke Park four times with our senior team in the last 5 years, winning a Cup Final along the way. Our Junior teams have competed in Go Games competitions over the past number of years with great success climbing up from Division 8 to Division 2 in 2019. We also added a second Junior team a few years ago as we had so many boys wanting to play hurling. Whether they are playing hurling in a club or just trying out in school, it is great to see a growing love for our national game.
We looked at a strategic Plan as to how we could develop G.A.A. as a whole in the school. First of all we decided to buy new jerseys for our Junior and Senior teams. We kindly asked the parents to buy the appropriate shorts/socks for the school teams. We also set up school blitz competitions in both Gaelic and Hurling taking place in Kilmacud Crokes. The idea was to make students and parents familiar with their local GAA club. We contacted Dublin GAA players Danny Sutcliffe (hurling) and Kevin Nolan (football) to present medals on the day. We also invested in more helmets, hurleys and sliotars for the school with GAA Coaching being provided by Kilmacud Crokes (Niall Corcaron and Paraic McDonald).
With the building of the new classrooms, we took the opportunity to paint a “Games Wall” in the school. This wall is used for multi-sports activities including Gaelic, hurling, tennis, golf. We also are grateful to Kilmacud Crokes for their on-going support both in school and with the use of their facilities for training our teams.
We are very proud of the success we have hand in recent years, not only in winning trophies but in giving students of all abilities the opportunity to play and develop their skills in our national games. We hope to continue this development for years to come.