SCHOOL REPORT: ST AUGUSTINE'S, DUNGARVAN:ST AUGUSTINE'S College moved to its present site in 1972. The school's buildings are greyish-brown and non-descript, functional in style like much of the public service architecture built at that time; but it is outside the building that dreams get hewn.
Set against the backdrop of the Comeragh Mountains, the school’s environs encompass 43 acres of rolling hills, the Elysian fields of Ireland’s pre-eminent athletics school. As a measure, every year for the last 18, the school has won Munster’s all-round cup for athletics.
Thanks to the ingenuity and toil of a former member of staff, Fr Hayes, seven pitches were sculpted from scrubland. When summer gets ready to announce itself, Brother Patrick Lennon, mastermind of the school’s athletics triumphs for over 20 years, will burn an eight-lane grass track around one of the GAA pitches.
Off in another corner of the grounds, past a slew of trees, lies a hammer cage and circles for discus and shot-putt throwing. There is also a pit for long and triple jumps.
Indoors in the school’s gym hall, Thomas Houlihan practises one of the most intriguing and daunting forms in sport: the pole vault. It takes a certain nerve to run full pelt and hurtle yourself into the air like he does. In one of the great counter-intuitive mantras, “the fastest stride”, the initiated tell you, “is the last one”.
When asked by young, would-be pole-vaulters what’s required to master the art, Brother Lennon tells them, “You need speed and suicidal tendencies”.
Unlike the other track and field disciplines, which hot up around Easter time, Brother Lennon opens the gym year-round on Wednesday nights for pole-vault training. “Any of them that are any use at all, they’ll come and they’ll try it out,” he says. “They’ll know after a while: ‘Okay, this is not for me.’ Or some kids who look like they’re going to make good pole-vaulters, they’ll get up to a certain height and then the fear comes. The fear factor kicks in. You have to be looking out for this, and you say, ‘Okay, this guy isn’t going to go any further in this even though he has the build, the strength, and the speed’.”
St Augustine’s is particularly renowned for its prowess in pole vaulting. In the last 15 years, for example, 11 of its pole-vaulters have represented Ireland in schools internationals. About a third of those came from the Houlihan household. Thomas is the best of the lot, or “currently”, says Brother Lennon in qualification. Last year, Thomas; his sister, Lisa, and brother Lawrence all won Irish national schools titles for pole vaulting.
Thomas got the bug from his older brother, Liam, also a national pole-vaulting title winner. The Houlihans are farmers so Thomas’s lunchtime weights sessions are supplemented by delivering fertiliser and cutting silage on the farm at home. “They’re never idle in that family,” confides Brother Lennon.
“You’d be running around, hopping gates, lifting heavy stuff, that’s weights training itself, I suppose; all that helps me,” says Thomas about the by-product of his farm work.
Last year in Antrim, he broke a 34-year-old Irish record for under-17s in the juvenile clubs’ national championships.
“I get a wicked buzz out of it – going really fast and getting a right good height,” he says of his grá for vaulting. “When you go along to a competition, everyone’s watching because it’s such a spectacular sport. I love that.”
Kate Veale, aged 15, is one of the other athletes – six in total – from St Augustine’s College who won an Irish schools title last year. She’s set five national records already in race walking. She’s also an accomplished cross-country runner, having competed for Ireland in the recent schools cross-country internationals in Bangor, Wales.
For someone only used to the ungainly sight of the power-walkers on Pat Shortt’s Kilnaskully, she’s remarkably graceful to watch, as she glides over the ground. In what is a particularly technical athletic event – where often up to half the competitors in a race might be ejected for violations – she’s never been disqualified in her career. Disqualification comes for “loss of contact”, ie if her back toe leaves the ground before the heel of her front foot has retouched it, or for “locking”, that is if her knee locks before her body passes over it.
Like all of the country’s top school athletes, both Veale and Houlihan have their eyes on competing in the Olympics one day. Another old boy from St Augustine’s, David McCarthy, the first Waterfordman to break the four-minute mile, is – ahem – on track to represent Ireland in London 2012.
Brother Lennon could spot his talent from a distance. “He was fairly handy before he even arrived in the school, from running with his club,” he says. “He was already in his head a winner of the Olympics. He’s very single-minded. Once he was given an instruction or told what to do, that’s it.”
St Augustine’s Quick Facts
School:St Augustine's College, Abbeyside, Dungarvan, Co Waterford
Nickname:The Friary College
Founded:1874
Number of pupils:637
Sports played:athletics, basketball, Gaelic football, hockey, hurling, judo, women's football, rugby, soccer.
Eminent member of teaching staff:Angela Walsh, PE teacher, captained Cork's women's football team to All-Ireland success last season.
Notable past pupils (athletics):Junior Cummins, JJ Barry, Liam Hennessy, Joe Brice, Derek Hayes, David McCarthy, Niamh Briggs and Waterford's All-Ireland final hurling team captain last year, Michael "Brick" Walsh.
Notable past pupils (non-sport): Ned Sullivan, chairman of Eircom; Mick Wallace, entrepreneur and manager of Wexford Youths soccer team; and Fine Gael frontbench spokesman, John Deasy, TD.
Inside Track: Thomas Houlihan
Age:17
Pole-vaulting hero:Sergei Bubka
Best pole-vaulting memories:"I represented Ireland three times – twice for the school and once for the club, West Waterford, and I won the Celtic Internationals in Scotland last year."
Play other sports:"No. I'd like to perfect this one."
Notable relatives:Martin Kehoe, his uncle, won the World Ploughing Championship three times
