December 2017
It’s that time of the year when the Mary’s Charity Drive shifts into full throttle. This year’s selected charity is Aoibheann’s Pink Tie, as recommended by the Fitzgerald family. This charity works to support families going through the anguish of cancer and will be of great help to the family of Wesley Fitzgerald, brother of our Leaving Cert student Cailum Mac Gearailt. It’s great to be able to help one of our own and the lads have already made a start…selling sponsorship through the official Charity cards, collecting from local businesses for the auction, selling raffle tickets in the school for great prizes and next week well be Carol Singing in Shop Street. Please support us in this worthy cause and help out the lads if they come calling. No matter how little you can afford it will all be put to good use.Thank you.
A huge thank you to Radek and his team of helpers in the kitchen who once again pulled out all the stops to feed a full Christmas dinner to each and every student of the College as part of our St. Mary’s Feast Day celebrations on December 8th. It was a fantastic success, preceded by mass said by Fr. Martin, and the welcome return of the College Choir, who were in fine voice. Staff, as is customary, served up the turkey dinner, under the watchful eye of Principal Tom Nolan…whose biggest task was trying to ensure it remained as close as possible to ‘one dinner , one pupil’!
November 2017
A brilliant big thank you to all the students, teachers and parents who attended the third running of the Fr. Seán Manning Quiz on Friday afternoon. It was another great success with a record 50 teams competing…way more than we had anticipated!
October 2017
Congratulations to Moycullen man Paul Conneely on being selected as Head Prefect of. St. Mary’s College for the 2017/2018 School Year. We are all very proud of Paul in the College and he is an excellent example of what it means to be a “Mary’s Man”! Paul is currently directing the 16 student leaders chosen by St. Mary’s College. We wish him all the best in his new role.
Huge congratulations to our BY Young Scientists Michael Lukyanov, Fergal Byrne, Hubert Matuszewski and Morgan O’Callaghan who have qualified two projects to participate at the finals in January 2018. Michael and Fergal are studying the correlation between impulsivity and gambling, while Hubert and Morgan are doing a scientific study on the disengagement of teenagers in Politics. Both are currently working really hard to complete their work and are looking forward to the competition.
Meanwhile, well done to Jakub Szymonik and Alex Polchowski whose video ‘How does sound work?’ made the final of the National ReelLife Science video competition coming fifth out of over 200 entries in their secondary school section
at the above e mail address.
Our newly elected prefects had an exciting day in Killary Adventure Centre recently. They participated in numerous team building exercises as they honed their leadership skills…and had great craic along the way.
September 2017
It was great to see the Liam McCarthy cup back in the Mary’s corridors again last week. the team were represented by Gearoid McInerney, while former Mary’s man and manager of the successful minor team Jeffrey Lynskey brought along three of this players and their Cup. The lads gave a presentation in the study hall and then there was an opportunity for our students to have autographs and a scatter of selfies taken with the lads.
Well done to Moycullen’s Diarmuid Mulkerrins who won the All-Ireland minor Handball title at Croke Park. Diarmuid prevailed on a 21-15, 19-21, 21-16 scoreline against his Tipperary opponent to record a brilliant win
June 2017
The Royal College of Science Cup was first presented in 1916 to the province that scored the most points to win the Senior Team Competition at the Irish School’s Track and Field Championships. The school that amassed most points for their province got to hold on to the cup for the year. In 1954 the rules were changed slightly and the cup was presented not to the winning province but instead to the school that had amassed the highest score of points. As it transpired that honour went to a Galway school, Garbally College, and it returned a further three times to the great St. Jarlath’s College teams of 1972, 1973 and 1975. Since then it has never returned to Connacht until St. Mary’s College created a piece of College history by taking the cup across the Shannon for the first time in 43 years following an excellent day’s athletics in Tullamore.
St. Mary’s have been the dominant school in Connacht Schools athletics for the past number of years and following the most recent championships held at Athlone IT they are current holders of the Senior (U-19), Intermediate (U-17) and Junior (U-15) best school team shields, while narrowly missing out on the Minor (U-14) title by a single point when finishing second. Indeed, they have now won the senior team title for 11 years in a row, and the Intermediate and Junior titles for 7 and 6 years in succession respectively. This has ensured the status of Best Overall Boys School for those 11 years, an achievement to which many students, both current and former, have contributed.
Having amassed so many Connacht titles a plan was put into place over the past two years to make an attempt at winning a national title, and this year saw that dream finally come true. Mary’s qualified athletes in 31 events from the Connacht finals, including 13 events at Senior level. Nine points are awarded for a win in any event, with second securing 7 and so on down to eight place in a sliding scale. With so many qualified athletes the athletics coaches set about convincing their athletes that although they may not win an individual medal they may help the team effort by finishing in the top eight to secure a point for the team. To a man they bought into the idea and so the College playing grounds have been a hive of activity for the past few weeks as hurdlers, hammer throwers, sprinters and triple jumpers trained to perform to the best of their ability in the quest for those elusive points.
The senior team has a couple of dedicated athletes from GCH, for instance team captain and top class 400m runner Shane Traynor Canavan, but the rest are those whose athletics prowess lies in other fields. As a point in case, Diarmuid Mulkerrins, from Moycullen, is a multiple National Champion and World medallist in his sport of Handball, Gabriel Dossen is the Irish Junior Champion Boxer who hit the headlines when winning a bronze at the World Boxing Championships in Russia before Christmas, while Martynas Sakalauskas and Faustas Tamulis are Irish Basketball medal winners with the College Senior Basketball team. This eclectic team came together as one and focused all their considerable athletic ability into a single goal, and by the time the last event of the day, the Senior 4x400m relay, came along the College knew that they had created a piece of history by capturing the College of Science Cup for the first time ever.
That 4 x 400m then provided the icing on the cake, as Shane brought his relay team from fourth place on the final changeover to a within whisker of first, making up almost six seconds in a storming run to finish 2 seconds behind the winners from in second place. Shane had earlier experienced the disappointment of finishing 4th in the individual 400m, although his personal best time of 49.58s should be enough to ensure selection for the Irish Junior team going forward, so when he crossed the line to secure a coveted medal the response was electric. He was immediately surrounded by his teammates, and all of the younger athletes from the College. Indeed it was the example of one of those athletes, first year Jason Lydon, securing a bronze medal in the Minor Shot Putt, that set the standard for the day, and it was only right and fitting that each student shared in the excitement of the winning senior team as the famous old cup was presented to them on the podium. Also amongst those who were first at hand to congratulate the boys were the coaching team of Belvedere College in Dublin who have set the standard in this competition, winning 15 of the last 16 cups. As mentioned, the senior team amassed a hugely impressive total of 49 points with the team members who helped reach this total being; Eimhin Mulkerrins (4th Senior Walk), Gabriel Dossen (5th 400m Hurdles, 7th Triple Jump, 2nd 4 X 400m), Diarmuid Mulkerrins (5th 2000m Steeplechase, 2nd 4 x 400m Relay), Martynas Sakalauskas (4th Hammer, 6th 4x100m Relay), Faustas Tamulis (5th Hammer, 6th 4 x 100m Relay), Shanet Traynor Canavan (2nd 4 x 400m Relay, 4th 400m, 6th 200m), Ryan Traynor O’Toole (2nd 4 x 400m Relay, 4th 400m Hurdles), Henok Dems (6th 4x100m relay), Abraham Shomefun (6th 4 x 100m Relay)
Due to the combined efforts of the younger athletes on the day St. Mary’s College actually emerged as runners up for the overall School Trophy, finishing with 75.5 points behind the excellent 834 points of a very strong Thurles CBS team. All in all it was a fantastic day of athletics, which saw a number of other Connacht medallists, and a host of broken records, indicating that the standard in schools athletics is improving constantly. However, it is a standard that the St. Mary’s College athletics teams will continue to aspire towards, and hopefully the efforts of the current, now National Senior Champions, will inspire those coming behind them to emulate their feat.
Two Happy Men!
May 2017
Congratulations to our JC Science quiz team who won the Boston Scientific ISTA Galway Regional Science Quiz at GMIT. Pedro Quaresma, Alex Polchowski and Abhi Sangani beat off the challenge of 36 teams from all across Galway city and county to capture the coveted prize, retaining the trophy won by last year’s team. Our B team of Hubert Matuszewski, Ola Ogbebor and Cillian Flanagan eventually finished in 6th place after being in contention for much of the competition, while our third team of Brian Martin, Harold Valionis and Fergal Byrne also performed really well. The lads winning score of 70 points out of a possible 80 was a phenomenal result and was enough to beat the Jes into second place with Calasanctious Oranmore one place further back ahead of Claregalway. Well done everyone.
April 2017
Congratulations to the first year maths team who have qualified for the regional final of the nationwide IMTA First Year Maths Competition. This prestigious competition began in 1994 by the Irish Maths Teachers Association and is held in schools nationwide. It covers brain teasers, arithmetic and abstract reasoning questions. The first round was held in St. Mary’s and the students who scored the highest were invited to participate in the Regional Final on Saturday the 13th May at Dominican College, Taylor’s Hill. Best of luck in the final boys.
Well done to all the lads who took part in our very successful Junior Sports day during the week. There was some fantastic talent on display, showing that the future of athletics in the College in in secure hands. Everyone who took part and finished their race or event deserves great credit for pushing those who eventually won medals to the limit. Of course there were some outstanding individual displays, and without naming names it is clear to see from the results sheet here who the outstanding athletes in first and second year are.
Congratulations to our Junior Chess team who captured the silver medals at the recent All-Ireland Schools chess finals held in Gonzaga College Dublin over the Easter break. The lads, representing Connacht, beat the Ulster and Munster champions from Ballymena and Ennis before losing out to a very strong Leinster team from host school Gonzaga. They are now back in practice for the Galway Chess league. Chess boards are available though the games box at lunchtime for those interested in joining them.
February 2017
Well done to all the Mary’s old boys who were involved in Galway’s great Gaelic Football success over the weekend. Sean Kelly and Dessie Conneely were instrumental in helping Galway to the last ever U-21 Connacht Championship. They now face Kerry in an All-Ireland semi-final and all of Mary’s will be behind them all the way.
Meanwhile the Senior team secured promotion to Division One of the National League and a place in the Division 2 League final against Kildare in Croke Park on Sunday. Well done to the sizeable Mary’s contingent who were involved…Ruari Lavelle, David Wynne, Paul Conroy, Micheal Lundy, Seán Armstrong, Gareth Bradshaw, Eddie Hoare and selector Seán Conlon. Best of luck in the final lads.
Well done to our Senior team who retained their Connacht title following a determined race in Sligo. Full details can be found on the athletics page
Well done also to our gallant first year team who performed really well in their first ever Connacht finals.
January 2017
Two cheques, each for €3625 were presented to our designated charities at a short ceremony in the College. Youthwork Ireland Galway and Galway River Patrol representatives were both on hand to accept their donations and were both delighted with the generosity and effort of our students and staff on behalf of these worthy causes. Mikey Kerin was the lucky winner of the signed Connacht Jersey offered to those who had collected over €100 for the cause.
A brilliant victory for the Mary’s Senior Soccer team in the Walter Burke Cup this year. The lads put in a sterling performance to overcome their local rivals the Bish by 4 – 0. A hat-trick by Senior Head Prefect Seán Croke, and another from Paul Kelly saw the lads not only retain the cup but also ensure qualification for the last eight of the Connacht Senior Cup. Captain Dion Walsh received the cup on behalf of the College. Mary’s Abú.
Mary’s students had a very successful and educational trip out to the BT Young Scientist in Dublin
, arriving back in Galway brimful of ideas for next year.
