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CBS Kilkenny News Update Summer 2022

What's new at CBS Kilkenny?

  • Principal's Message
  • Awards Night 2022
  • Graduation 2022
  • Athletics Success
  • Tansition Year Update
  • Irish Microsoft Champion
  • Irish Ice-Hockey International
  • Sci-Fest Winners 2022
  • Fun Run & Sports Day 
  • Parents Council Update
  • Academic Scholarships
  • Students Council Update
  • International Relations Club
Principal's Address

As we reflect on the academic year which is coming to a close, we are very grateful for how our lives and our school community continue to return to normal after two challenging years. We take pleasure in the fact that the year passed without a lockdown or closure, that our state exam students had clarity from an early stage, and that school life is once again greatly enriched by extracurricular activities, sport, music, a return to socialisation and togetherness. The shadow cast on our lives by Covid-19 is fading.

There have been many success stories on the sports front during the year, with great achievements in athletics, hurling, football, soccer and basketball. The talent of our athletes really came to the fore at the South Leinster Track and Field Championships with CBS Kilkenny students claiming twelve medals and the plaque awarded to the most successful intermediate team of the championship. There was further success in the Leinster Finals with the school winning three gold medals. The success of our First Year Hurling Team in winning the Leinster Championship was a marvellous achievement among many other highlights throughout the year. The Senior Hurling Team won the league, and both the Second Year and Junior Hurling Teams met with defeat only at the Leinster Final hurdle in competitive campaigns.

In soccer, there was success in the FAI First Year League, the Under 15 Carlow-Kilkenny League, and at senior level in both the Leinster Cup and League. There were great celebrations with the triumph of the Senior Soccer Team in the league final. In basketball, all teams were very competitive, with the Second Year Team earning the title of South East Champions and competing strongly in the All Ireland series. We enjoyed a particularly successful year in gaelic football with great successes in First Year, Second Year and at Junior level.

We are delighted that we were able to stage a wonderful musical extravaganza with our partners in Loreto Kilkenny. In the past month our students have been able to enjoy our traditional celebrations at this time of year which include graduation and award ceremonies, Sports Day, the Fun Run and more.

As they reach the end of their secondary education, we wish the students in our Leaving Certificate Class of 2022 every success and happiness in their lives ahead, and we want them to always value and nurture the sense of belonging which they have grown up with during their time in CBS Kilkenny.

The Board of Management of CBS Kilkenny has provided excellent support and direction over the past year, and we are delighted that the new school development project is moving apace, currently progressing through the tender process. This very significant project would not have been possible without the partnership of our trustee body, the Edmund Rice Schools Trust (ERST), who have provided fulsome support during many hurdles and challenges. At each stage ERST have shared our vision, which became very real when we received this walk-through video from the design team. We look forward to the move to Dunningstown Road, and we are delighted to become part of the close community there.

The Parents Council of CBS Kilkenny plays an important role in school life. Parent voice and student voice are highly valued, and we count on these partnerships in many aspects of school life. I thank the outgoing Secretary of the Parents Council, Vivienne Crowley, and the outgoing Treasurer, Sheila O’Reilly, for their dedication to CBS Kilkenny over many years.

As the academic year comes to a close, I thank you for your ongoing support of CBS Kilkenny, I wish our exam students every success and each of you happiness over the months ahead, and I hope you and your family will enjoy a relaxing and restorative summer.

Le gach dea ghuí
Tom Clarke
 

 
Awards Night 2022

We were delighted this term to see the return of our annual awards night to the school calendar. Thanks to the tremendous work of Ms Dooley and her team, we were treated to a spectacular night of music, performance and celebration at the Watergate Theatre.

Amid wonderful performances by the school choir, jazz band and the TY cast of Footloose - The Musical, we celebrated a spectacular year of achievement for our students across a wide range of areas and bestowed our awards upon their worthy recipients.
 
In a year where no less than four CBS Kilkenny students represented Ireland in four separate disciplines, Paddy Collins (pictured with Mr Geoff Meagher) took home the prized McFadden Medal. For a full list of this year's winners and photographs please visit cbskilkenny.ie 
Graduation 2022

For the first time in three years the Leaving Certificate class marked their graduation with a series of celebratory events.

Traditional favourites like the Students V’sTeachers Soccer Challenge and the class excursion to the summit of Slievenamon were revived, while under the guidance of their Year Head Mr Morrissey, a fitting send-off was given to this most unique of year groups with a beautiful mass in St. Mary’s Cathedral, followed by refreshments in the TY Hub on James’s Street.

Many thanks to Ms Dowling for the wonderful arrangement of music and song, to the Religion Department, and of course to our chaplain Fr Jim Murphy.

Congratulations to the Leaving Certificate Class of 2022. We are very proud of you all and wish you every success and good fortune both in your forthcoming examinations and in the future.
Athletics Success

Under the guidance of Mr Kennedy and Mr Dore, the CBS Kilkenny Athletics Team rounded off a fine season in style this term.
 
At the Leinster Championship in Santry, Noah Denieffe won gold in the javelin, Alex Cullen won gold in the long jump and Billy Coogan won gold in the steeplechase, while the intermediate team took silver in the 4x300 metres and claimed a plaque for being the most successful boys team at the recent South Leinster Championships.
 
At those championships, the CBS Kilkenny team collected one relay gold and a further seven individual medals. Well done to the entire team and their coaches. We are very proud of you all.
 Transition Year Update

It was heartening to see the students arrive back to school after the Christmas break with renewed enthusiasm and eager to meet the various challenges and ventures that lay ahead.

In January, TY students availed of an interesting workshop facilitated by Alex Walsh of Personal Safety Ireland. The full TY cohort also took part in an enjoyable Segway E-Movement Workshop. Following on from this, The Royal College of Surgeons ran the very informative TY MiniMed Programme. Then, in late January, following sterling work from both students and teachers, it was wonderful to see no less than six of our TY students’ projects qualify for the BT Young Scientist Competition.
 
February began with our students traveling to Thomastown to take in an excellent staging of The Kings of The Kilburn Highroad, directed by Lake Productions. The students also participated in a whole host of community-based initiatives including The National Spring Clean, daffodil selling for the Irish Cancer Society as well as assisting Special Olympics Ireland with the Regional Bocce Heats in The Watershed.

CBS Kilkenny also held our first in-house SciFest Competition. Following this, sixteen projects were selected to take part in the regional SciFest Competition in IT Carlow. While all entries were commended for their respective projects, a special mention must go to Jack Deacon who won the physics award and to Oisin Farrell who received an award for the best Scientific Communicator. 

 

Our Sports Leadership Group also assisted with the smooth running of our annual Fun Run, while our FAI Coaching Group organised soccer tournaments for the students of the CBS Kilkenny Primary School and The Mother of Fair Love. Our Cairdeas Group should be commended for their efforts throughout the year. They were particularly instrumental in ensuring the smooth integration to secondary school of the current First Year cohort. It was also pleasing to see so many of the TY cohort complete the Gaisce Bronze Award.


And if the students were not busy enough throughout January and February, thirty-two of our budding actors/singers were also rehearsing and preparing for Footloose - The Musical, a joint production with the TY students from Loreto College, Kilkenny. The full cast and their teachers deserve enormous credit for what proved to be a sensational run in The Watergate Theatre. A special word of thanks must go to the Directors Ms Niamh Dooley and Ms Mandy Dowling for their unstinting dedication and professionalism over countless days and hours to bring this huge production to the stage. Whilst our actors and singers were busy on the stage, many of the TY cohort took part in Road Safety workshops and a Food Safe course which is certified for five years. 
 
For many of our students, the trip to Carlingford Adventure Centre in April was the highlight of the year. This trip was eagerly anticipated by all, and it certainly did not disappoint. Despite the hit and miss nature of the weather, the students enjoyed three fun-filled, action-packed days that included zipline activity, laser combat, archery, high rope climbing as well as a whole host of activities that placed an emphasis on teamwork and friendship. 
 
In early May, several our students took part in a Neuroscience Information Day aimed at TY students, run by The Irish Institute of Clinical Neuroscience. A special mention must go to Dr Paul Crowley for delivering such an interesting and informative series of talks. The lads also enjoyed a Biodiversity Walk through the Castle Park and the Canal Walk where they learned how to identify and record various invasive species on the National Biodiversity Data Centre App.

On Friday 20th May, the TY Cohort marked their last day in school with a trip to KBowl, followed by a leisurely swim and culminating in a competitive and entertaining soccer tournament in The Watershed. 

The TY Cohort are currently partaking in their second block of Work Experience, and we wish to acknowledge the support of the many employers who have facilitated our students with valuable work experience placements. I also wish to acknowledge the contribution of the many outside agencies who were willing to conduct the various workshops of proven educational and experiential value for our students.

I wish the TY class of 2022 every good wish for their Leaving Certificate and beyond. I would like to pay tribute to each one of you for your participation and engagement, your positivity, your energy and your enthusiasm. 

Niall Tyrrell
Transition Year Coordinator
 
Irish Microsoft Champion

An amazingly successful year for our students on the international stage continued in May when Rohan Vargas took 1st place in the Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) Championship at the Microsoft Head Office.

Rohan will now represent Ireland in the MOS UK & IRELAND Championship in June, with a chance to compete on a global stage at the Certiport MOS World Championship in the USA!!

Congratulations to Rohan, his teacher Ms Mercer, and the entire Computer Science Department. We wish Rohan the very best of luck and look forward to reporting on his progress in future CBS Kilkenny News Updates.
Irish Ice-Hockey International

Congratulations to Leaving Cert student Alec Young who represented Ireland in The Development Cup tournament in Fussen, Germany in early May.

Team Ireland brought home the bronze with Alec the top scorer! 
Well done Alec. We are very proud of you.
SciFest Winners 2022

The competitive successes of our science students in recent times continued this term at the regional SciFest Interschools Final at Carlow Institute of Technology.
 
CBS Kilkenny took home a hat-trick of prizes in this strongly contested event. Jack Deacon claimed the Physics Award, Oisin Farrell received the award for Best Scientific Communicator at the event, while Rohan Vargas & Joel Matthew won the Science Poem of the Day competition.
 
Very well done to all our winners and contestants, to their teachers Ms O' Connor and Mr Collins and to our Science Department for their continued first-rate preparation of our students.
Fun Run and Sports Day

The annual Blessed Edmund Rice Fun Run and Sports Day also made a welcome return to school life this term and we think we’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.
 
After two years of Covid-19 cancellations there was a lot of stored up energy to be released and fun to be had!
CBS Kilkenny Parents Council picked up in September where we had left off in the summer of last year with our monthly meetings being held online. This remained the case until our final meeting in May where we were delighted to be back in the school. Many thanks to the school management team for facilitating this.
 
We are hoping the end to restrictions will mean we can increase the number of parents on the Council. We aim to achieve this by holding a Meet & Greet with the incoming First Year parents in September, something which hasn’t been possible for the last number of years due to pandemic restrictions.
 
Activities remained curtailed by restrictions again for the most part for the year but looking forward to next year we are hoping to get back with several activities in the pipeline. It certainly is exciting times around the school with the new school development taking shape and looking very impressive on the virtual tour circulated by the school.
 
We would like to thank the school management and staff for their enormous contribution to the education of the students and particularly so during the restrictions brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic. The continued academic success of the school is testament to that hard work and the dedication shown by the students.
 
We would like to wish both the Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate students the very best of luck in their upcoming examinations. The Leaving Certificate students this year have had a challenging two-year cycle but we’re sure they are well prepared for the upcoming exams.
We would like to offer our sincerest thanks to Vivienne Crowley, Shelia O’Reilly, and John Bourke after many years of dedication to the Parents Council.
 
Finally, we would like to wish everyone in CBS Kilkenny a happy and healthy summer break and look forward to the new school year.

 
Scholarship Winners

It gave the entire school community great pleasure this term to celebrate the continued high academic standards and achievements of our students in third level.
 
In University College Dublin, Harry Bowen, Tadhg Harrison, Adam Gordon, Tristan Roche & Patrick Hickey (not pictured) received UCD Entrance Scholars Awards in recognition of their outstanding Leaving Certificate results in 2021, while in Waterford Institute of Technology, James Fitzpatrick was awarded a President’s Scholarship. These scholarships are awarded to students who have demonstrated a capacity to improve our society in the future.
 
Congratulations to all our award recipients. Your achievements continue to make us very proud.

This year, the Student Council helped to fundraise on both a local and international level. Locally, we raised money for Teac Tom and the Good Shephard Centre. We also undertook a Global Citizenship Initiative on behalf of the Surgeon Noonan Society in University College Cork.

We helped our former student and current UCC medical student Johnny Collins to raise funds before he left to work in underfunded rural hospitals in Sub-Saharan Africa. We organised and ran a poster competition and Christmas Jumper Day, raising €3,000 which was divided evenly amongst the 3 worthwhile causes. 

We were delighted to return fully to the classroom for the full academic year and the Student Council, on behalf of the whole student body, would like to wish our Junior Cycle and Leaving Certificate class of 2022 all the best in their upcoming examinations. 

International Relations Club Outing 2022

The inaugural club outing of our International Relations Club this month was very impressive stuff indeed.
 
Members were greeted at Leinster House by Carlow-Kilkenny TD and Chair of the Finance, Public Expenditure & Reform Committee, John McGuiness before availing of the opportunity to watch their session. They also watched Leader's Questions open from the Dáil public gallery before proceeding to watch the Senate debate.
 
Well done to Mr Murphy for organising a very informative and enjoyable day.
YOUR NAME ON OUR NEW SCHOOL FOR GENERATIONS TO COME:
Play your part in creating a NEW SCHOOL BUILDING for CBS KILKENNY that is truly “state of the art”. With the support of our community and local businesses we aim to raise €1million to fund projects including an astro-turf pitch and enhanced Science, IT and Arts facilities to see us into the next century.
 
Online donations can be made at www.cbskilkennydevelopment.com
 
Donations of €250 or €500 will be recognised with an engraved tile in our GENEROSITY PAVEMENT to be located outside the entrance of our NEWSCHOOL. You can write your name/message when you pay online. CBS Students and parents will be reading it for generation to come.

If you would like to donate a different amount, or in a different way then please email us at donate@cbskilkenny.ie. We will be giving additional recognition to any donations over €1000. Get in touch for more information.
 
Thank you for your support. With you all behind us we will succeed!

Click here to visit the website. 

RECONNECTING
Want to catch up with former classmates?
If you are a former student of CBS Kilkenny you can be added to our database by emailing your address and mobile number and LC year to reconnecting@cbskilkenny.ie‬

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CBS Secondary School Kilkenny Ireland · James's St · Kilkenny · Kilkenny, R95 H985 · Ireland

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