Sport continues to play an important role in our school community. Participation in team sport provides our students with an opportunity to learn first hand about teamwork, leadership, organisation, communication and resilience. Sport is a medium through which students can improve their physical and mental wellbeing and make new friends. 

Ultimate Frisbee

U16 Basketball

By Kyle Galima

Game 1  Drimnagh Castle vs Catholic University School (CUS)

The U16 school basketball team faced CUS in our opening game of the season. We got off off to a great start in the first half of the game. The team were playing fast paced and were up by a lot points with a few minutes into the first quarter. CUS managed to pull it back towards the end of the quarter scoring plenty of layups and shots. CUS had great defence and a few tall centers so Drimnagh Castle struggled to score more points. CUS would hold great amounts of pressure on every Castle player on the court, especially those who hadn’t got the ball.

 We picked up the pace going into the 2nd half of the game by scoring fast breaks and preventing CUS from setting up their defence in time.  Unfortunately for CUS they could not keep up and we score consecutive baskets to extend our lead. By the end of the game Drimnagh Castle won against CUS scoring 40+ points against them.

Game 2 Drimnagh Castle vs Gonzaga

We started our second game as we had finished the first game, playing high tempo basketball. We led from the beginning and built up a comfortable lead by the end of the first quarter. However, we failed to build on this lead in the second quarter and we began to get frustrated by the tall and awkward Gonzaga defence. We began to fumble the ball on offence particularly on the fast break. By half time our lead had slipped to under 10 points.

Thankfully our defence held up with some great steals from Jack Walsh keeping the pressure on Gonzaga. We managed to get a grip on the game again and finished out 10+ winners.

Game 3 Drimnagh Castle vs St. Andrews

Our thiurd game was a straight forward win as we led from start to finish. Coach Wallace emptied the bench. Some of our younger players like Aidan Bau and Timothy Ermitano played really well in this game. We won comfortably and to qualify for the knock out stages. By finishing top of our group we had home advantage in our quarter final.

Quarter Final Drimnagh Castle VS St. Finnian's

We were faced against a tough opponent as they were currently undefeated and had 2 players that were a huge offensive threat. This game would decide which team would advance into the regional  semi-finals and the All Irelands.

 Entering the first quarter St. Finnian's gave us a very hard time on offense. They hardly missed one shot in the opening quarter and we were very slow to find our rhythm on offence. At the defensive  end St. Finnian's brought a lot of intensity and had a really good start dominating rebounds and taking the lead by double digits. Drimnagh Castle on the other hand could barely keep up and we were having a difficult time scoring. We were down by 10 points towards the 1st half of the game. 

As Drimnagh Castle came into the 3rd quarter we ended up stepping our game up but despite the best efforts of Irish international Joaquinn Pahinag  we struggled to find our scoring groove. The St. Finnian's defence was on top . St. Finnian's were having a terrific game by not missing one shot and unfortunately they kept up with the momentum towards the very end of the game which resulted in Drimnagh Castle losing. We  had put in massive amounts of effort into the season and unfortunately fell short into making it to the school finals.

U19 Basketball 

The U19s started their campaign with  a very intense game. Drimnagh Castle was against the CUS U19s team. The game was already off to a bad start as Drimnagh were lacking height and CUS had really good defence.  In the first quarter we struggled to score as CUS had 2 extremely tall players in the paint so it was difficult to score layups and on top of that their defence was tough to get past as they would full court press certain players and CUS would remain full court press for the whole game. On the other hand CUS were scoring effortlessly against us, they would feed the ball into the paint and their centers would be able to score multiple points which got them in a massive lead. 

We  struggled to score points throughout the whole game. Towards the 2nd half we finally woke up and started to make a comeback. We stepped up their defence which stopped them scoring easy layups. Coming into the 4th quarter Drimnagh Castle had taken the lead by just a small amount, we were up by 4 points. Coming down to the last few seconds of the game Drimnagh Castle were up by 3 and scored a 3 to seal off the game. Due to this major part of the game all we had to do was pass the ball around and waste time in order to win the game. 

This victory was followed up by excellent wins against Gonzaga and St. Andrews which led us to second place in the group and a place in the last 16 of the competition. Here we would meet Castleknock CC.

Drimnagh Castle VS Castleknock (Round of 16)

The U19 school basketball team were up against Castleknock in the last 16 and with 2 star players missing, we would have to have a really good start coming into the first quarter. Castleknock were a challenging team to come up against as the majority of the roster were tall they had a huge advantage over us.

Despite all of this Drimnagh Castle had a really good start and held the lead towards the end of the first half. We kept our momentum and Castleknock were having a hard time trying to stop Drimnagh Castle. Castleknock called a timeout and things took a big change in how the game was played out. Castleknock stepped up their game and started to make a comeback which led to them having the lead towards the end of 3rd quarter.

The fourth quarter started and both teams had a tough time scoring on both ends as they both played really good defence. Unfortunately Castleknock ended up scoring and started to do full court press till the very end of the game to seal off the win. Drimnagh Castle had scored 2 points but it wasn’t enough as they were down by 1 with 10 seconds left and with Castleknock in possession they unfortunately lost which resulted in an end of our U19 season. Despite losing the game it was a good campaig for this team as it was the first time they had qualified for the regional play off rounds. A number of our more senior players had good season including Muna Onuoha, Ivan Pebredo, Ivan Parenas and Harvey Ambrosio.