Schools notes

Lucan Community College

Transition Year Graduation
We had a fantastic evening at the TY Graduation, celebrating a wonderful year filled with memorable experiences and achievements. The night showcased everything our TY students got up to throughout the year, including skiing, the trip to Poland, the Carlingford overnight adventure, reptile and forensics workshops, ice skating, the Gaisce Challenge, Develop Me workshops, work experience placements, and so much more. It was a great opportunity to reflect on the friendships, personal growth, and unforgettable memories made along the way. Congratulations to all of our TY students on a brilliant year!

DMR West Garda Youth Awards
Congratulations to our students Ryan, Abbie, and past pupil Amy, who received a Special Achievement Award at the DMR West Garda Youth Awards last night in recognition of their outstanding sporting achievements. A fantastic accomplishment and a well-deserved honour, congratulations!

Whole School Sports Day Success at Lucan CC
Lucan CC recently hosted its first Whole School Sports Day. Students from every year group enjoyed a fun-filled day as they rotated through a wide variety of events and challenges.

The day included team sports such as soccer, tag, and frisbee, alongside fun games including egg and spoon races, wheelbarrow races, tug of war, and dodgeball. Students also had the opportunity to test their athletic abilities on the track and field with 100m and 200m sprints, relay races, javelin, and shot-put. After all their hard work students enjoyed an ice-cream. A huge congratulations and thank you to the organising committee whose hard work, planning, and dedication brought this wonderful day to life.

Colaiste Phadraig

Awards Night
The annual Colaiste Phadraig Awards Night was held in the school on Monday 20th May. The Sports Hall was once again packed, with over 600 people in attendance as parents, family, friends, students and staff gathered together to celebrate a whole host of award winners at the biggest and most anticipated event in the school calendar. In total, 330 awards were given out to 220 students across a broad spectrum of categories, the evening was a powerful celebration of the outstanding achievements, talents, and contributions of our student body throughout the school year.

The opening awards were for academic excellence, with beautiful glass plaques presented to one student from each year group for each academic subject.

The majority of awards on the night were non-academic, with awards for the BT Young Scientists, the Student Council, Mark O' Neill Student of the Month winners, Gaeilgeoiri na Miosa winners, Sports Stars of the Month winners, Class Tutor awards, ERST Student Committee, music, well-being and Gaisce awards, sports awards, effort and application, positive attitudes, co-operation and courtesy merits awards, Visual Art Creativity and homework awards to name but a selection of the awards!

Calum Mackey won the Transition Year Student of the Year Award in recognition of his fantastic all-round contributions to TY throughout the year. Calum fully embraced and embodied the spirit of TY and showed tremendous initiative at all times.

6th yr Michael O' Brien won the Sports Star of the Year Award in recognition of his outstanding displays for the school’s senior hurling and Gaelic Football teams.

Darragh Kane won the overall From Each, His Best award, in recognition of giving of giving his best at all times in every aspect of school life.

6th yr Evan Whelan won the perpetual Padraic Naughton award, named after a former principal of Colaiste Phadraig, for his fantastic all-round contribution to school life throughout the year.

The main award of the night, The Tommy Brennan Student of the Year, was won by 6th yr Dara Reilly, who got a sustained standing ovation from all in attendance. Dara, who won the TY Student of the Year in 2024, impressed his teachers and management with his maturity, impeccable manners, strong work-ethic, positivity, leadership qualities and helpfulness throughout the year. He was an outstanding prefect, always punctual, reliable, patient, calm and respectful. He was also heavily involved in the ERTS Student Council, which did so much tremendous work in the school during the year.

An enjoyable night was had by all and thanks to Ms. Farrell and Ms. O' Leary who did a great job introducing and presenting the awards throughout the evening, to Ms. Casey for her fantastic work in distributing the awards.

The Tommy Brennan Student of the Year Dara Reilly with his Year Head Ms. Farrell and principal Mr. O' Meara

Many thanks also to Vivienne Ralph from Diamond & Gem Jewellers in Lucan who provided all of the awards for the ceremony and was a constant support right up until the last few frenzied hours (and minutes!) of preparation! Vivienne, as usual, went above and beyond, even turning her car around and going back to her shop after hours on Monday evening to make sure that some very late (emergency!) awards were prepared and engraved.

Trips
One of our 5th yr Irish classes enjoyed a memorable and well-deserved trip to Celbridge Snooker Hall last Tuesday, taking a break from the classroom for an afternoon of snooker, pool, and spoken Irish. The outing provided students with an excellent opportunity to relax, socialise, and practise their Irish in a fun and informal environment.

A major highlight of the day was meeting recently retired professional snooker player Fergal O'Brien, who generously gave his time to coach the students throughout the visit. Many students were completely new to the game, and Fergal's expert demonstrations of stance, cue control, bridging techniques, and spin shots offered a fascinating introduction to the skills and precision involved in snooker. Students then had the chance to put what they had learned into practice on both the full-size snooker tables and the smaller pool tables.

Sincere thanks are extended to the staff at Celbridge Snooker Hall for their hospitality. Special appreciation is also due to Fergal, whose warmth, humour, encouragement, and generosity made the afternoon unforgettable for everyone involved.

Soccer
Hard luck to our senior soccer team, who were beaten 3-1 by Templeogue College last Monday in the Dublin Metropolitan Division 1 League Final. The game took place on the astro pitch at Crumlin United and, despite tremendous support for a huge number of our fans, who encouraged and backed the team throughout, Lucan just missed out on the day against a very strong Templeogue team. John Donoghue scored an excellent goal late on, but overall, the better team won.

Photographer in the making ....

Odhran Keegan, Colaiste Phadraigh Photographer of the Year, with his award.

St Joseph's College Lucan

Public Access to Law
Well done to our Transition Year students who took part in the Public Access to Law National Competition on Saturday in the Criminal Courts of Justice. The students won 2 out of 3 of their cases and did the school proud. PAL is a transition year module that strives to make the workings of the legal system more accessible to the public and to students. Since 1997 PAL's large panel of practising barristers have presented the PAL visiting law module to transition year classes throughout the length and breadth of Ireland. This module also prepares teams interested in partaking in the PAL annual mock trials competition.

Street Law AI workshop
Transition Year students and our AI student committee attended a Street Law AI workshop. Many thanks to Beauchamps Law firm for an insightful and engaging day. A 'Street Law' Artificial Intelligence workshop is a public legal education program where law firms or practitioners visit secondary schools - such as recent sessions in Lucan - to teach students about the law and societal impacts of AI.