St Eunan’s College have launched their 5K with members of their Parents’ Association, Staff and Students turning out to promote the event which is to take place on Tuesday 23rd of April at 7.30pm.
Registration for the 5K will take place in the College Recreation Hall from 6pm onwards prior to the start of the race.
Chris Darby, Principal of Saint Eunan’s College wants to encourage as many people in the local community to take part as possible.
“We want the event to be fun and are encouraging our students and their families to join in, we would like to invite past alumni and would also encourage the families of boys who will be attending the school in September 2013 to come along. We are welcoming both walkers and competitive runners and all participants are invited back at the school for refreshments at the end of course.”
The 5k is a joint venture between Saint Eunan’s College Parents’ Association and the Transition Year Students.
“Our role as a Parents’ Association is to support the school and the boys as best we can, be that in an organisational capacity, by providing people to help at events or by fund raising. The 5K offers the opportunity for us to do a little of each of these. It’s a great event for everyone to be involved in from a health and fitness point of view and if we do raise some money so much the better.
“We have so many students very successfully involved in both sports and academic pursuits; the school had two all Ireland football wins last year and a silver in basketball, students have gained awards in maths and science, we currently have a group of students with diverse interests from marketing to engineering involved in a Formula One project and they have reached the next round of their competition.
“In addition the school has a very active Student Council involved in student welfare and environment issues. All of these projects require some degree of financial support be it in terms of travel, equipment or materials and fundraising enables us to offer that support” explained Attracta Winters, Chairperson of the Parents Association.
“We would welcome support from any parents who would like to become involved with the Association, that need not necessarily mean attending meetings although new attendees are always welcome, we already have a number of parents signed up as helper volunteers and always need more. Helper volunteers may be involved in marshalling at an event such as the 5k, helping serve tea and coffee at school open evenings or assisting at the School Book Sale, Bag Packing, Collections or other fund raising events, really just an hour or two in the course of the year.”
Anyone interested can find out more about the Parents’ Association by checking out the college website and can contact the association via e-mail parents@sainteunans.com.
The Transition Year Students along with Mr Gary McDaid of the PE Department and Mr Pauric Meenan have been instrumental in planning the route. The staff and students felt that it was very important that the route of the 5K centre round the college itself and were keen to have the race both start and finish in the vicinity of the school. The big challenge has been to come up with a route that minimises steep gradients; however it was never going to be an option to avoid them altogether in this area of Letterkenny. Conor Morrison a TY student and avid runner himself has designed some promotional literature which we hope to distribute round local Sports Clubs, Fitness Centres and Schools shortly. The TY students have also been instrumental in sorting out much of the minutiae associated with this type of event, from signage, to clip boards to computer stations for registration.
We would particularly like to thank Brendan McDaid, Letterkenny Athletic Association who has been invaluable in providing us with direction in the organisation of the 5k and also Letterkenny Athletic Association for their kind offer to assist with the Start and Finish Stages of the 5K.
Prizes are being offered for the top 3 competitors in each category, Senior Men, Senior Women, Junior Male, Junior Female and Team. The Team Category is open to groups of 5 runners who wish to run together as a Team and we are encouraging not only those from Saint Eunan’s Soccer, Gaelic and Basketball teams to put together a team but also teams from other schools and sports organisations. Spot Prizes are also on offer. Keep an eye out for further promotional information and we hope that the weather will keep fine.