Friday morning last Eamonn Coghlan came to our school. The roundabout at the top of Mourne Road is named after Eamonn, “Coghlan Roundabout.” We invited Eamonn to plant bulbs on his roundabout to help the TY Geography project we are doing “Bring The Bees Back to Drimnagh!”
Eamonn who is originally from Cooley Road, Drimnagh worked hard for his passion which is running. He had a very successful amateur running career in Ireland led to a scholarship in the United States, where he won four NCAA titles in track running and ran a sub-four-minute mile to set an Irish record at 22 years of age. He soon set the European record over the distance. His speciality was the indoor mile run – he gained his nickname, “The Chairman of the Boards”, as a result of his great success on the US indoor circuit. He broke the indoor mile world record on three occasions, and also set a world indoor record over 2,000 m. He represented Ireland at three Olympic Games 1976, ’80 and ’88. After competitive retirement, he continued to race and became the first man over 40 years old to run a sub-four-minute mile.
Eamonn spoke to us about the importance of having a passion and working towards it. For some it may be running, others it may be just getting outdoors and going for a walk. The message was, whatever your passion, go out and get it. The benefits of being outside have been proven time and time again in many research projects. It can bring a sense of calm to us in a time when our lives are getting busier and busier.
Our TY Geography students and Green School Committee really enjoyed the morning. We would like to thank Eamonn Coghlan, Scott Watson (Dublin City Council), Donal from The Parks department and Lorraine Mitchel from Tidy Drimnagh for all their help and support with this project.
We look forward to next Friday when we will be planting on Carruth Roundabout with our boxing Gold Medal Olympian Michael Carruth!
Ms. Hall and TY Geography Class