November was another action packed month for our Athletes. We were very excited and happy to welcome 15 new Young Athletes from our waiting list! Some of our new friends had been waiting over a year to join us, so it was lovely to finally meet them and their parents. We had lots of fun practising our running, jumping, balancing, throwing and catching! We did lots of smiling, laughing and giggling too – even though we really don’t need any practice with those.It’s not just our athletes who are busy. Our volunteers between them have invested hundreds of hours in training courses; from child safeguarding to sports specific coaching. One of our coaches, Louise, has just finished training to train other coaches. Louise is now a qualified tutor with Special Olympics Ireland who will deliver the Sport Ireland Coaching Children course to aspiring SO coaches. Well done Louise!

We had some visitors from UCD School of Health and Human Performance to observe how awesome we are; our club is helping with a physical activity study in conjunction with Special Olympics Ireland. One of the purposes of the study will be to develop coaching drills for SO Clubs. The results will also help to develop a video gaming application capable of supporting movement skills through a safe, educational and fun play experience.We had great fun helping Hayley and their wonderfl eam and we already can’t wait for their next visit.

News from the North Pole is that all of our athletes are on the good list again and you know who will have treats for them again this year! On behalf of all our club members we’d like to say thank you to all our supporters for another wonderful year.We wish you all a happy and peaceful festive season.