This article was written by Goodness and Alexandrina from Ms Fennelly’s 6th Class
Four weeks prior to the race in Rathcoffey, Ms Keogh and Ms Allen approached 5th and 6th class to get names for anyone interested in joining the cross country team.
The day of the trials came and we went down to the grass pitch, warmed up and took our places at the starting line. The girls ran first, after 1,200 meters we had our top 16 girls. The boys ran afterwards and we had our 32 runners. We trained twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays for 3 weeks.
Thursday, 21st of March was the day of the competition. We left school at 9:30am to go to Rathcoffey GAA Club. We had four teams, two girl teams and two boy teams. When we got there, the boys quickly warmed up seeing as they were running first. Ms Allen, Ms. Nolan and Ms. Keogh gave out the jerseys and numbers while the boys got ready at the starting line. There were 160 participants in the boys race. The highest place of any of the boys in SPN was 37th by Joey Berry McDonald in 5th Class. After the boys finished their race, the girls started warming up and putting on their jerseys and took their places at the starting line.
There were 169 participants in the girls race.The highest place that any of the girls in SPN placed Ruth Griffin, who finished 32rd overall.We were very happy with our places and so were the teachers.There was a lot of competitive schools so it was a really exciting race.Before we got on the bus, Ms Allen shared around chocolates to get our energy back.
Overall, It was a great experience and thank you Ms Allen, Ms Keogh, Ms. Nolan and Ms Mather.
