Photo: Gearóid Lacey

It’s that time of year again when primary school athletes start preparing for the Galway Primary Schools Cross Country which is held each year on the last Tuesday of September in Renmore. This has been a fantastic event for primary school children, growing in popularity each year with over 50 schools and 1000 children taking part in the 4 races in each of the last few years.

Members of Craughwell AC have been to the fore in the Galway and Connacht event on many occasions with Craughwell NS, Oranmore Boys NS, Killeeneen NS and Ballymana NS all taking Galway and/or Connacht titles on occasion. Oranmore Boys NS and Craughwell NS have dominated the boys’ and girls’ races the last few years at both Galway and Connacht level – with Craughwell taking 5 Connacht titles in the girls team event and Oranmore Boys taking a similar number of titles in the boys team event.

Following is a brief summary of the performances of Craughwell NS – no disrespect to other schools not to include similar detail, its just that I have the detail to hand for Craughwell NS. I will try to pull the same information together for the other local schools. Other schools to feature at Connacht level besides the aforementioned include Killeeneen who took the senior girls Connacht crown in 2007 and Ballymana who took bronze in the junior girls in 2009, while both Carrabane and Clarinbridge took Galway team medals in the senior boys in 2010. And there were also some fine individual performances from athletes from the club representing these and other schools such as Gaelscoil de hIde and Lisheenkyle NS.

Following are the top 10 finishers from Craughwell NS at Connacht level in the senior races over the years:- 

While following are the details of the leading teams at both senior level and junior level since the introduction of the junior race in 2006. As you can see, the school has a marvelous tradition in the event – hopefully something that can continue this year! And a tradition which is well established in Oranmore Boys School also, and hopefully starting to get established in other schools in our catchment area such as Ballymana, Carrabane, Clarinbridge and Killeeneen.