New Year, new term, new set of activities and adventures awaiting our school community. Despite the cold start to the year we hit the ground running with a very active start to the year. All Ireland Basketball, Can Sat competition and the BT Young Scientist and technology Exhibition took up a huge amount of time during the first week back...and it kept moving on relentlessly from there...
We lost a few 'old friends' around the College thanks to storm Eowyn...but thankfully no one hurt!
Congratulations to past pupil Parsia Jahanzad who was awarded a prestigious Trinity
Entrance Exhibition Award from TCD. This scholarship is awarded for highest achievements on the LC in their year of entry and Parsia was the only Galway student to receive one. We are thrilled for Parsia, who is studying Computer Science, and wish him the very best of luck with his chosen path. Well done
Our 2nd Year CMMG girls basketball team got their Galway League off to a flying start with a win over a competitive Headford at home. Well done ladies Meanwhile, in tough conditions our U15 girls soccer team faced a strong Ballinasloe Community School in Ballinasloe. Despite the terrible weather, they put in a solid performance and showed great determination on the pitch, before enjoying some well earned refreshments at the Galway Plaza!! Well done to all the girls involved!
We marked Catholic Schools' week with a number of events organised by the RE Department, and shared the message of Bishop Michael Duignan with our students.
Well done to our U 19 boys soccer team and management who qualified for a Connacht Shield semi-final by virtue of a hard faught 3 - 2 victory over Gort CS.
"The only way to achieve the impossible is to believe it is possible" - Charles Kingsleigh, Alice in Wonderland
Students thoroughly enjoyed a week dedicated to the exploration of resilience. Sincere gratitude is extended to our student wellbeing mentors, Logan, Robert, Emma, Dean, Fionn and Megan, for their valuable contributions in engaging with our first-year classes and providing insightful discussions on cultivating resilience within the school environment.
Furthermore, mindfulness exercises, such as chair yoga, meditation and breathing techniques, were incorporated into the wellbeing classes throughout the week. These activities fostered inner strength and tranquility among the student body, proving to be both relaxing and beneficial for overall wellbeing
The BT Young Scientist and Technology Exhibition is a highlight for students all over the country each year, and in CMM we are no different. Over the past ten years, including time as St. Mary's College, we have succeeded in qualifying 34 projects, including four this year, the most from any Galway city school. We received lots of coverage from the Connacht and Galway City tribune and what follows is a report written about our projects that appeared in the paper, accompanied by photos of our students.
Coláiste Muire Máthair students are eagerly awaiting the opening of the 2025
BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition , where they will finally get the chance to exhibit and present the projects they have feverishly been working upon since their qualification was confirmed back in October.
This year the College has four projects participating from the eighteen projects qualified from Galway, and they cover a wide range of topics. Each of the eight students competing will be doing so for the first time, with first-year students Crystal Quinn and Liya Walsh particularly excited to be getting this chance at such a young age. Their project, entered in the Junior Social and Behavioural section explores the Evolution of Science text books with regard to their highlighting the work of female scientists. With the idea that ‘if you can’t see it you can’t be it’ the girls have researched over 60 science books stretching back almost 50 years, and have found that, although things have been improving in the past few years, the commitment and contributions of women in science still leaves a lot to be desired.
Third-year Ukrainian student Yehor Popkov has used his knowledge and experience as a student in Ireland over the past two years to formulate his project A Ukrainian Perspective: Using a modified PERMA-Profiler test to gauge how content Ukrainian students are in schools in Ireland. To gather his data Yehor devised a scale and sent it via an online questionnaire to fellow Ukrainian students around the country. Yehor’s project is entered in the Intermediate Health and Wellbeing section and he is looking forward to exhibiting in Dublin, and informing us about how Ukrainian students are adapting and coping in the Irish school system.
With the government proposition to spend €9 million on equipping schools with Yondr pouches during the new school year the project of fifth-year students Jasmine Polinar, Boyuan Guo and Adam Cooke is indeed a topical one. Their project, entitled, Digital Natives: A Yondr Pouch Proposal , is also entered in the Health and Wellbeing section. Yondr pouches were introduced into CMMG in September 2023, and the students have drawn on the experiences of their fellow students, their teachers and their parents to establish how they feel the introduction of the pouches has affected them over the past year and a half. For schools that will be facing into this issue next September the project affords some valuable insights.
The fourth project qualified, in the Senior Social and Behavioural Science section, explores the effectiveness, or not, of earwitnesses. The project, How our poor voice perception makes us an unreliable ear witness,. derives its data from an online survey designed by fifth-year students Ali Amirouche and Seoijin Lee which features respondents having to identify characteristics such as age and appearance from a range of voices they hear. Suffice to say that our ears can often deceive us.
Following on from this it was great to see two awards return from the BTYSTE to CMMG. Liya and Crystal were runners-up in their category out of 13 projects, while Yehor won a Display award for his presentation. This was great news for some incredibly hard working students.
Here are some collages that show the fun had by our competitors and the 65 first and second year students who enjoyed their trip up to the RDS on Thursday
Our U-16 Basketball girls, a dedicated and talented team who are going from strength to strength, faced into the daunting task of All-Ireland Play-offs against Kings Hospital Dublin and St. Mary's, Nenagh, hosted in CMMG. The girls and their coaches put in Trojan efforts, staying back to train after school and even training over the Christmas break.
There was a super start to the Play-offs as the girls fought back from being 15 points behind against St.Marys of Nenagh, to win by 2 points. The girls dug so deep and fought for every ball, to get us over the line and the win in Game 1.
Game 2 saw St Mary's, Nenagh take on Kings Hospital, Dublin with Nenagh coming out on top.
That set CMM up for the chance to go forward to the Quarter finals if they could win Game 3 against Kings Hospital. Unfortunately, nerves got the better of the girls and the first quarter saw CMM go down by 17 points. It was an uphill battle after that to try and close the gap. The CMM girls fought tooth and nail to get every point, closing the gap to 6 points, but it wasn't enough to change the result and Kings Hospital took the win of the last game of the day, resulting in St Mary's Nenagh go through to the quarter finals in Dublin.
For the CMM U16 Girls, this was a huge achievement. It is the first time the girls have not only got out of our Galway group, but topped the Galway League, then getting to the All Ireland play off. We are really looking forward to seeing what they can achieve at U19's next year. Well down to all the girls and coaches. Roll on CMMG!