Awards Day 2024
Awards Day took place on Friday, 17 May, and allowed us to celebrate another successful year of participation and achievement and, once again, highlighted how important it is to ensure we recognize the wonderful achievements of our students. The ceremony afforded us the opportunity to reflect on the successes of the past year and to reward students for their achievements and leadership in areas of academic life, sport, art, music, culture, science, enterprise, public speaking, to name but a few.
Sincere thank you to our guest of honour and chairperson of the BOM, Mr Paul O’Brien, Master of Ceremonies, Mr Bosco Guinan and to Ms Laura Gill for her seamless coordination of the event. Congratulations, also, to Rían Byrne who returned to the school to collect his award for the highest results in last year’s Leaving Certificate. Finally, well done to our Head Boy and Head Girl, Mike Connolly and Izzy Richardson, who spoke so eloquently on the occasion. As we congratulate the students who have received awards at the end of this year, we also look forward to new beginnings in September 2024.
Transition Year Night of Celebration
We all enjoyed a lovely celebration of success on Thursday night, 16 May, with the TY students and their families. The choice of presentations, music, song and dance all created a lovely atmosphere on the night, and it was a wonderful showcase of student participation and teacher innovation. The culmination of the night saw each student presented with a folder of certificates earned during the year. The students were also presented with medals for completing the Gaisce Bronze Award.
Congratulations to Caoimhe Doherty, Ellen McCarthy and Viera Karsnakova for scoring the highest credits for the year, and to Killian Keane and Alexi Xanthea Mendez for winning the Spirit of TY award. Many thanks to Ms Doyle for her leadership and hard work in ensuring that all aspects of this programme came to fruition, and to Ms Davoren and Ms Smith for their leadership in supporting this programme. It was a lovely night and both students and parents really appreciated the occasion. Warmest congratulations to the recipients of the many awards handed out on the night. We look forward to working with the students in Fifth Year as they prepare for the Leaving Certificate.
Graduation 2024
The Graduation ceremony for the Class of 2024 took place on Tuesday night, 21 May. The school community came together to celebrate the experiences and achievements of our Sixth year students in what was a beautiful evening of readings, reflections, music and speeches. There was an array of talents from both students and staff on show which contributed so much to what was a joyous occasion for all. The graduation was an all-round team effort from staff, students and parents working collaboratively to create a memorable evening. Thank you sincerely to Fr Aquinas Duffy for his kind words and to everyone who contributed to the ceremony. We wish the 2024 Class success in their exams and in their future life paths.
Summer Trips to Emerald Park
Transition year, Second year and First year students enjoyed great days out to Emerald Park over the past two weeks. The excitement levels were at an all-time high as each group enjoyed the different activities on offer, and even some of the teachers braved the rollercoasters. The Cúchulainn, as always, proved a highlight and First and Second year students were lucky enough to venture on the park’s newest rollercoaster, Tír na nÓg. The trips were a super success and the students were amazing from start till finish. Thanks to all involved.
Lourdes Fundraiser
The students travelling to Lourdes held a fundraiser coffee morning, with delicious sweets and treats for everyone to enjoy, in the staff room on Friday, 17 May. Thank you so much for all the generous donations which totalled the grand sum of €445.
TY Photography Trip
The final group of Transition Year students explored Dublin on the ‘InstaTours' Dublin Sightseeing tour led by photographer Anupama. They spent the day learning about camera settings, tried different compositions and experimented with a variety of poses. Anupama showed them iconic places like St. Stephen’s Green, Umbrella Street, and Love Lane. They finished the day with an impressive collection of photos showcasing their creativity.
MOS Awards
Well done to Jill Corrigan, Jessica Murphy and Bailey Crean who qualified for the MOS Championships on the 16th May.
School Reading Champs & Record Breakers!
Congratulations to the students of 1 Foyle for reading 112 million words in the library Accelerated Reader Programme this year. Not only were they top class in 2023/24, 1 Foyle also smashed the previous school record in the programme. A very special mention also to Akhil Singh, this year’s best individual reader with 11.5 million words - another school record!
Huge thanks also to Mr Doherty, our school librarian, for his great work with all students this year.
Darkness into Light 2024
Well done and thank you to all the students, staff and wider Wicklow community who helped organise, volunteered, and took part in this year's DIL event.
It was wonderful to see the large crowd, all in the DIL yellow t-shirts, supporting each other while enjoying the beautiful sunrise.
Dublin International Literature Festival
Five First year students, Jayden John, Finn Fleming, Oisin Riso, Jan Musiol and Joe Murphy, had the great honour of performing on stage at the Dublin International Literature Festival in Merrion Square in Dublin on Wednesday, 22 May. The festival is one of the biggest in Europe attracting thousands of visitors over the week.
The chance to perform at this prestigious event came about after the students performed their poems at the annual Wrapparound rap/poetry event in Trinity College a few weeks ago. A literary agent was in the audience and duly chose our school as the best performers out of the other twenty schools participating. An invitation was then extended to the students to perform their poems at the literature festival in Dublin.
Without a trace of nerves, the five students all read their poems brilliantly in front of a live audience of 600 and many thousands more listening to the live streamed event. The practice we put in over the last few weeks paid off as the students all read their work with a real confidence. The performance was met with loud, sustained applause from the audience. A quick trip to McDonalds on the way home was a well-deserved reward on a day the students will long remember. Thanks to our librarian, Mr Doherty, for arranging this opportunity.
JCSP Summer Celebrations
Well-known storyteller, Niall de Burca, was the guest of honour at our annual JCSP Summer Celebrations, which were held in the library on Tuesday, 21 May. Niall, a regular visitor to our school, is one of Ireland's, and Europe's, best known storytellers, and treated our First, Second and Third year JCSP students to his hilarious, weird and very tall tales. One of the oldest forms of entertainment in the world, Niall has been flying the flag for this form of oral writing for many years and is one of the few proponents of this great art form working today. After each storytelling session, Niall kindly offered to do the honours and present each of our winning students with their prize for the excellent work they did since Christmas in both literacy and numeracy. Prizes of €20 book vouchers were given to the students. The Third Year JCSP students were also presented with their portfolios after completing their studies through the JCSP Programme. The students were also rewarded with treats at the end of each session.
Junior Girls GAA
On Wednesday, 15 May, our Junior Girls made history by making it to a Wicklow Schools Junior B Cup Final for the first time. They met a strong Loreto Bray team in Bray. CCM quickly got onto the scoreboard with some excellent scores from our forwards who kept us in the lead for the entire match. Loreto Bray kept up the pressure and brought the score back to 2 points by halftime.
Loreto scored the first score of the second half but, thanks to some excellent defending by Layla Whelan, Ellie Massey and Gráinne Murphy in our back line and some fantastic saves by Robyn Loughran in goal, CCM remained in the lead. Our forwards added three goals in the second half to win by 7 points.
Huge congratulations to our Third year players: Annabell Killeen, Kelly Kavanagh, Mia Nolan Doyle, Aoife Hunter, Ellie Massey, Reece Hughes, Caoimhe Lawlor, Kayla Renwick, Freya Renwick, Emily Carey, Lily Neville, Nicole Peterson, Layla Whelan and Freya Roche on finishing out their last Junior season as Wicklow Schools Junior B Champions.
First Year Hurling
After a very successful campaign CCM, First year hurlers reached the Leinster final of their section where they faced a strong team from Mercy Secondary School ,Kilbeggan. The game started at a ferocious pace and the intensity was relentless throughout. CCM immediately had two goal chances which, unfortunately, we failed to capitalise on, before Mercy burst through and managed the first score with a goal of their own. CCM were quick to respond with their opening score, a point, and then a great goal from Joshua Callery. It was nip and tuck for the rest of the first half and a real pitched battle to secure possession of the sliotars. Mercy was just ahead by a goal 3-5 to 2-5 at half time.
CCM got off to a good start with the opening point of the second half but thereafter came under constant pressure as Mercy managed to launch wave after wave of attack. The concession of a couple of goals meant the lads really had to chase the game, however the team kept up the effort and came back to within 2 points. Unfortunately, Mercy was able to find more scores to seal the victory for them, despite a huge effort from CCM.
The team will take many learnings from the match and will be back stronger than ever next year. Thanks to Mr. Guinan and Fifth Year students, Darragh Leacy, Jonah Fanning and Matthew Dowling, for their help on the day. There were excellent performances from the whole team in all positions on the day, well done to all players for their efforts during the year.