My Day at the School Sports
Dear Diary --:
We had a sports day for the whole school on Thursday, June 8th.,2000. As we don’t have a special field of our own, we had to use the GAA Sports Centre, which is about a ten-minute walk from the school. We were hoping for a nice day, as the past few days have not been very good. There is nothing worse than having a sports day in the rain. Everyone has been looking forward to the sports day for weeks. The parents Council, especially the mothers, have been very busy getting everything ready for the day. They were ordering medals, getting sacks and getting cones and little flags to mark out the different activity areas. One mother went to the Garda Station and got a hand loudspeaker so she could announce the different races. When I woke up this morning the first thing I did was look out the window to see what the day was like. It didn’t look very good, as it was very cloudy but at least it wasn’t raining, yet.
The
question was would it rain or not? I got dressed and headed for school.
There was great excitement in the yard as the boys compared their spuds
(small potatoes) for the spud & spoon race, some tried to find
partners for the three-legged race and others just talked about the day
ahead. The bell rang at the usual time of 9.10 am and we all headed into
class. When Mr. O’Neachtain came in he organised us for the day. He
asked about our partners for the three-legged race, the wheelbarrow race
and if we had our spuds and spoons. He was also in his tracksuit and he
had his special whistle.
At about
ten o’clock we walked down to the GAA Sports Centre with all the other
classes. When we arrived there were mothers, aunts, grannies, cousins of
all the boys there to cheer everybody on. We first had to go to our
special class area and put down our bags and baggage. This was our base
area for the day. The field was laid out into activity areas for the
different events. The events included the three-legged race, the
wheelbarrow race, the spud & spoon race, the sprint, the wellie
throwing competition, the penalty shoot out, and the lap of the field for
the big boys. Every class had six events. Adam Schneider’s Mum was our
official record keeper. It was her job to write down the boys who came
first, second and third in each heat and most importantly in the final.
She did a great job, as she didn’t know most of the boys in the class as
her family are only in Tramore a few months.
Our first
event was the “spud & spoon”. This was great fun as all the boys
started very fast and it was really funny watching the spuds falling all
over the place and fellows running after them and putting them back on
their spoons. You can read all the results by clicking here. The winner
was Tom Healy. We then had the three-legged race. And of course, there
were some boys who forgot their ties. There were boys who also were
missing partners. This activity requires that both partners can work or
walk together well. Some boys like Anthony Dunphy and his brother Patrick,
were looking good. They were overall winners of this event. They must have
been doing some extra practise at home. We then had the sack race.
Ashley’s Dad gave us the bags. Most boys took off their shoes as it made
it easier to run. I ran with Liam Flaherty. I was sitting in his top
pocket. It was great fun. A lot of fellows fell. The winner was Tom Healy
again. We then had a rest for while. After having our lunch we had the
sprint. And guess what, Tom Healy came first in the final again. We then
had the wheelbarrow race. This was great fun as boys were walking on their
hands as their partner tried to hold on to them. Owen Whitehouse and John
O’Grady were winners of this event. As everything was finished, we got
off early and we all headed home after a great day. We were lucky it
didn’t rain. We all got our medals a few days later and we had our
photograph taken for the papers. I hope we have another Sports Day again
soon.
Tuckamore
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