Sports
The primary sport focused on in Gonzaga is rugby, however many other sports such as tennis, golf, ultimate frisbee, and athletics are also played within the school.
The Junior Cup Rugby teams of 1989, 2003 and 2006 reached the final of the Leinster Schools Junior Cup. The Senior Cup Team (SCT) have often reached the quarter finals of the cup, but have never made it past this stage. They have, however, won the Senior League (for middle-ranking schools) on several occasions. As a result, Gonzaga no longer enter the qualification route for the major cups, gaining automatic qualification. The school has produced a small number of professional rugby players and four Irish internationals, Tony Ensor, Barry Bresnihan (who went on to represent the British and Irish Lions), Padraig Kenny, and 2003 alumnus Kevin McLaughlin. 2008 graduates Dominic Ryan, John Cooney and 2009 graduate David Doyle, are currently representing Ireland at Under-20 level. In 2008, the SCT captured the Vinnie Murray Cup after their second time in the competition, beating Cistercian College, Roscrea 19-7. They repeated this success in 2010 defeating CBC Monkstown 11-10. In March 2010, the Gonzaga Senior 4ths won the Leinster Senior 4ths League.
The school golf team won Leinster titles in 1999 and 2006. Previously, the team reached the semi-finals of the junior cup. In 2010, the Senior Team won the Leinster Schools Senior Matchplay competition, beating Blackrock College 3½ to 1½. They went on to win the All-Ireland Golf Championship in April 2010.
Gaelic games were not played in the past but, in recent years, a team has been entered in a Gaelic football blitz involving other rugby-playing schools. Gonzaga College won this blitz in 2007.
The school is occasionally represented by a soccer team in friendly matches, but association football is not an official sport of the school.
George Dockrell, a 2010 alumnus, is a full Irish international in cricket.
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Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“In the end, I think you really only get as far as you’re allowed to get.”
—Gayle Gardner, U.S. sports reporter. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 87 (June 17, 1991)
“Sweet smiling village, loveliest of the lawn,
Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
And desolation saddens all thy green;
One only master grasps the whole domain,
And half a tillage stints thy smiling plain;”
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)