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

Douglas Community School athletes competed in the latest leg of their Mile Challenge series recently at Cork IT track. The first year race was won by Jack O’ Mahony with a superb time of 5.34 and he was followed home closely by Liam Harris 5.38, Kevin Horan 5.42 and Jamie O’ Connell 5.43. Other great runs came from Luke Varian, Rory Barry, Stephen Cotter and Declan O’ Herlihy. In the older race Cullen Lynch had a fine win in 4.52 with other superb runs coming from Ian Tobin, Mark Seacy, Andrew O’ Keeffe, Billy Murphy and Jamie Sullivan. Next up for the athletes is the Munster Schools Cross-Country Championships in Cork where the school aims to retain the best overall school cup for the 6th consecutive year.

Steven Macklin

Two DCS teachers, Rosanne O’Callaghan and Neil Bronks, have returned from a successful visit to Uganda and will be putting together a report on this in the coming days.  This report will be posted here as soon as possible.

The next and most significant part of the project will be the visit of two Ugandan teachers to DCS for a week in April.  It is expected that they will get to participate as much as possible in the life of the school.

On Monday 19 April, we will have a visit from the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheál Martin TD, at 9.30am.  This will be the opening part of a Developmental Education Morning in the school.  We hope that as many students as possible will be able to participate in some way in this event.  We have organised for well over a dozen different speakers from various charities and development agencies to come to the school.  Each speaker will make a presentation to one or two class groups after the Minister’s address and exchange of plaques to mark our linking with the Ugandan school.  After the speeches, the charities and NGOs will have stalls with literature and will answer individual questions which the students might have.

During the rest of the week (15 to 21 April), the teachers from Uganda will attend classes, observing and participating in lessons and activities with the students.  Both Joseph Matovu and Grace Nakuya are very excited about the whole experience.

Cian O’Mahony, Ted O’Sullivan, Rosanne O’Callaghan, Neil Bronks.

U16 A team

After having a very successful year in second year the school was upgraded to A level school. This was going to be a challenge for the school teams. First to play was the U16 team. The boys started a heavy training schedule training at 7.30-8.30 twice a week and on afternoons each week. The national league coach from Blue Demons offered to help with the trainings as his son Alex started to play with the school.

In our pool we played St Aidan’s and Crosshaven away. St Aidan’s game was the first of the session. The boys started badly, letting the opposition run in easy layups and take a substantial lead. In the second half Peter Mullane, Klaus Ozolins, Alex D’Alessio, Darragh Fleming and Kiran Chopra found their form and played solid defence. The baskets finally started to drop, in the end the team only lost by five points.

The Crosshaven game was a great defensive game. On offense we fought for every basket. Fast breaks then saw Darragh, Klaus, Alex, Kiran and Peter run in some easy scores. It was great to see dedicated players like Kevin O’Leary, Simone Alade and Robert O’Reilly getting some court time. Douglas won convincingly in the end.

After the pool the team qualified for the semi-final, where we had to travel to Ballincollig to face Colaiste Choilm. The team played well, playing strong defence and attacking well also, but Colaiste Choilm were too strong for our young side. The Douglas team never let themselves down with Peter Mullane putting in a very impressive performance.

U19 team

As we only had 4 players playing U19 this year we decided to play challenge matches and prepare for next year.
Our first challenge match was against Crosshaven, it was great to see Stephen Neville and David Barrett don a school jersey. Michael Keating had his greatest game ever for the school scoring from all angles and making some great steals. We hope to have a Blitz later in the year for these players.

Rosanne O’Callaghan