On the 27th of April the Under-13 Boys’ Olympic Handball team travelled to Gormanstown College for the All-Ireland tournament. At 10am the boys played Kildare Town ET and they played excellently to take a 7-2 win in their first game. It was a superb way to start the winning spree. In our second game at 10:40am we beat Fermoyle NS to keep the morale high. Although we put some pressure on ourselves when we drew with Oranmore who had come all the way from Galway. Luckily our attack was on form with Liam Wade and Martynas Rumsas keeping the scoresheet high, which helped the team make it through to the semi-final. In midfield, Conor Gibson, Sean Ward, Jeremiasz Weglowski and Louis Connolly were digging deep as the hard work was non-stop. In defence Oscar Hennessey, Leon Dempsey and Dylan McMahon weren’t letting any shots get in on the superb goalkeeper James Pullen.
We beat Rush NS in the semi-final and progressed to the final where we would once again face Oranmore. Sadly, by the half time whistle, we were down 4-0 but in the second half we got 3 more goals. Unfortunately we just didn’t get over the line by the final whistle and the game finished 4-3. In the end, we had come second in the whole of Ireland!!! Everybody in St. Paul’s is extremely proud of our performance and we are very grateful to Mr. O’Donnell and Mr. McNally for all the hard work they put in throughout the year.
Written by James Pullen
Boys Handball final May 2023
