Douglas Community School athletes continued their outstanding Cross-Country season with some great individual and team performances at the Munster Schools Cross-Country Championships at Cork IT recently. The course proved to be a big hit with the athletes with plenty of fast running. First into action were the minor boys over 2000m where the DCS team had a superb team win with 29 points. The team had six athletes finish in the top 15 and easily won the team title. Jack O’ Mahony led the team home in a superb 3^rd with other great runs from Liam Harris 5^th, Kevin Horan 9^th, Alan Horgan 12^th, Jamie O’ Connell 13^th and Luke Varian 15^th. The junior boys raced over 3,500m and the race of the day came from Brendan Couch who eventually finished a superb 5^th. Brendan has come into great form in recent weeks and continues to get stronger. Behind him the team battled hard with Daniel Mason, Fintan Cadogan, Paul Lehane and Eric O’ Neill all having good runs to get the team into 6^th place. The intermediate boys team lined up in their 5000m with high hopes.  They produced the goods, winning the team title easily with 45 points.  The ‘B’ team came 3^rd with 93 points. Mark Seacy had his best race to date finishing a superb 5^th and with other great runs from Ian Tobin 12^th, Emmet Bracken 13^th, Andrew O’ Keeffe 15^th and Jamie Sullivan 16^th Douglas Community School had a great team win. Finally the senior boys’ race over 6000m proved to be a one-sided affair with Shane Quinn running away from the field. Patrick Coleman had a fine 2^nd place, running on his own for the whole race. With great runs by Cullen Lynch 7^th, Alan O’ Brien 11^th and Brian Murray 15^th DCS easily won this team title also. The team was without their 2^nd scorer in Peter Hanrahan, but will have him back in action in two weeks time. Douglas Community School also had the added bonus of winning the best overall school cup for the 5^th consecutive year.

Steven Macklin

Douglas Community School past pupil Kieran O’Callaghan, who did his Leaving Certificate in DCS in 2003, graduated in Mechanical Engineering from CIT. As part of VisionRE of the Cork Institute of Technology, Kieran has won the Cruikshank Most Technically Innovative Project first place award in the Enterprise Ireland/Invest Northern Ireland Young Entrepreneur of the Year Competition 2009. They received a First Place Award of €7,500, and a €20,000 Intellectual Property/Patent Consultancy Award.

Pictured receiving their award for “Terrain / Obstacle Detection System for the Visually Impaired”, Kieran is standing between Etaion Ni hAilpin and Norma Downing (both Business Administration, CIT).

Thanks in part to Kieran’s contribution, CIT went on to win the Island-Wide Innovation Award.

Owen Casey

The NT1 class present a cheque for €1717 to Medecins Sans Frontiers’ Haiti Appeal. The money was raised by NT1, who organised a raffle in the school, and by the staff of the school who held a table quiz for staff and friends.

Cian O’Mahony

A sample of projects for Leaving Certificate construction studies.  Douglas Community School offers the choice of cabinet-making, model-making or building details.

Sean Fahy