On Wednesday, 6th of December, 26 of our boys and girls and their four coaches- Ms. Clarke, Ms. Mulcahy, Ms. O' Driscoll and Ms. Carley embarked on the short trip to Santry to participate in the Olympic Handball Dublin Group Stages. Our boys and mixed team were drawn in a group with Dublin champions Rush NS, Dublin runner-up Kilkoskan NS and Scoil Bhríde BNS, Blanchardstown. Our girls were pitted against Rush NS and Kilkoskan NS. Our girls first faced Rush and their accuracy of passing and shooting told overall as our girls were on the losing end of both matches (but made great improvements in the second match). When our girls faced Kilkoskan NS, we were very accurate and took most of our scoring chances to win both games and finish second in the table overall. Unfortunately, only the top team would qualify for the Dublin finals.
Our mixed team of boys and girls played very well overall against the three boys teams and did them themselves proud.
Kilkoskan NS were the first opposition for the boys. Having gone 5-1 down at one stage, the boys did extremely well to pull a draw out of the bag and finish the game 6-6. They knew that they faced a really difficult challenge in the Dublin champions Rush. Our boys started off really well and traded goal for goal with Rush. At one point, the score was 4-4 with only 2 minutes remaining. However, Rush's power and strength resulted in them scoring two more goals to win 6-4. Our final match against Scoil Bhríde would be decisive. If we won the game, we would have finished second overall. We raced into a two goal lead in no time. Scoil Bhríde responded superbly and scored 4 unanswered goals. Like in our first match, the boys never gave up and kept plugging away to tie the match at 6-6 with a minute to go. They scored a final goal to win 7-6- our boys were agonisingly close to secure the much needed win to qualify.
Overall our three teams performed really well. We thank all of our boys and girls, their four coaches and Ms. Carroll for all the hard work they've done over the past three months.
We know look forward to a friendly blitz with Kildare ETNS on the 11th of January.
