With the Galway and Connacht Primary Schools cross-country coming up shortly again, following is a brief article from Craughwell NS involvement in the event. I don't have all the details for Ballymana NS and other schools, so apologies that the artcile is incomplete and only covers Craughwell NS.

 2002 

No records of this but I think Sasha Haverty placed in the top 10 to receive an individual medal and I have a vague recollection that Craughwell NS placed 4^th in the girls event. 

2003

We had a very strong 6^th class this year and both the boys team and girls team placed 3^rd in the team 1000m race in Renmore and qualified for the Connacht finals. Highlight was Ashley McDonnell’s 7^th place finish despite only been in 4^th class. Finishing positions were as follows, with scoring positions indicated by * below: 

 Onto the Connacht finals in Beleek, Ballina where Cathal Greaney placed highest of the boys in 13^th place to earn an individual medal.  The girls team made a remarkable improvement on their Galway place to claim the Connacht title by 4 points ahead of Ballina and Renmore. Scorers were as follows:- 

 2004

The Galway 1000m race saw a fine performance from Ashley McDonnell to take the individual silver medal. The girls had quite a young team and didn’t feature in the team medals, finishing in 5^th place: 

  In the boy’s event, the team took the bronze medal for the 2^nd year running with places as follows:- 

The Connacht finals didn’t yield any success, with Ashley placing highest in 13^th position. 

2005

Confidence was high of medals again in the Galway races, but this time the boys were surprised by some very strong opposition and took 6^th place in the team event:- 

In the girls event, a very strong team took 2^nd place with 66 points, with Ashley McDonnell taking the silver medal. Remarkably, the school had 9 girls in the top 50. 

Onto the Connachts, where only the girls took part, minus Ashley as she had a conflicting event that weekend. So the team of 6 were completely out of their age in this event – all with next year to compete again. The team ran superbly, placing in 5^th position with 144 points, only 4 points behind 3^rd place. 

 2006

This was a watershed year for the event in Galway, where a new race was introduced for 4^th class and younger and where Craughwell NS had some incredible performances at both Galway and Connacht. In Galway, the school won no less than the 4 team titles on offer on the day. The girls 4^th class race saw the team win by a big margin, scoring 37 points:- 

The boys 4^th class take weren’t going to let the girls steal the limelight and had an equally impressive performance with a score of 41 points to win the gold:- 

 The 6^th class girls followed up with a team victory by 4 points with a score of 40 points:- 

And the 6^th class boys completed an amazing success story for the school with gold in their team event also, in a score of 63 points:- 

And the Connacht finals proved pretty fruitful also with an amazing 2 titles for the girls teams. First the 4^th class girls winning by the tiny margin of 1 point ahead of Cregmore NS:- 

 Followed by the girls 5^th/6^th team claiming gold with a score of 94 points:- 

 4^th class boys took 7^th place, but only 7 points behind bronze place:-  

 5^th/6^th class boys took 5^th place with 127 points: 

Two articles detailing the Galway and Connacht events of 2006 can be found at www.craughwellac.com.