St Mary’s College claim Irish senior schools’ title

St Mary’s College made history at the weekend when it was crowned All-Ireland Senior Schools’ Track & Field champions for the first time, which also saw the end of a 43-year wait for a Galway school to claim national honours.

The Royal College of Science Cup was first presented in 1916 to the province that scored the most points to win the Senior Team Competition at the Irish School’s Track and Field Championships. The school that amassed most points for their province got to hold on to the cup for the year.

In 1954 the rules were changed slightly and the cup was presented not to the winning province, but instead to the school that had amassed the highest score of points.

Garbally College Ballinasloe became the first school to win the cup on its own right, and the national title returned to Galway three times in four years in the 1970s when St Jarlath’s College Tuam won the cup in 1972, 1973, and 1975.

That was the last Galway success in the comeptition until last weekend, when St Mary’s became only the third Galway school to win the cup at the national championships in Tullamore.

St Mary’s have been the dominant school in Connacht Schools athletics for the past number of years. It captured the Senior (U-19) title for the 11th consecutive year; the Intermediate (U-17) title for the seventh year in succession; and the Junior (U-15) title for a sitxh year in a row.

The school also narrowly missing out on the Minor (U-14) title by a single point.

St Mary’s qualified athletes in 31 events from the Connacht finals for this year’s national decider, including 13 events at Senior level.

Nine points are awarded for a win in any event, with second securing 7 and so on down to eight place in a sliding scale, meaning that even if an individual medal was out of reach, a strong performance would still see an athlete contribute to the team’s overall score.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.