Keeping the tradition of sport alive at Sion Hill

IN 1914 the young students at the Dominican College, Sion Hill, were warned against playing hockey.

The school journal tells how basketball was preferred by the authorities,

‘who approve of the upright positions of the players, so much better for growing girls than the one-sided stoop necessary for hockey’.

But despite the warnings, hockey thrived and the students fought their way towards winning the 1914 Ladies’ Leinster Schools Cup.

The journal recalls that they travelled to the final in a borrowed carriage and

‘a pair of handsome grey horses’.

Just over 100 years later, and sport is still alive and well at Sion Hill. And just last month a new chapter in its sporting history opened with the launch of its first all-weather sports pitch by Cllr Marie Baker, cathaoirleach of Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council on Sunday, May 24.

It is the result of an intensive

‘Pitch in for Sion Hill’ fundraising campaign by parents and past pupils since 2010. This achieved raising the ambitious target of

?¬700,000 with the help of teachers, parents, pupils, past pupils, Dominican sisters, Avoca Hockey Club, a Sports Capital grant and friends of Sion Hill.

The new facility will become the focus for all school sports including hockey, basketball, multi-sports, athletics and tennis. It also marks a new partnership between Sion Hill and Avoca Hockey Club, who will share the facility.

Sport is thriving once again at the school which has already gained four trophies in the 2015 Dublin South Central hockey league.

A large gathering of students and past pupils celebrated the launch of the new pitch.

Guests passed through a student Guard of Honour and there was an exhibition display of sports by current students, culminating in a demonstration match between Sion Hill and Avoca Hockey Club.

A commemorative booklet drawing on photographs and accounts in old journals that were recently discovered at the school and date as far back as 1908, was also produced for the occasion.

There was also a display of photographs going back through the history of the school, from students in long tennis skirts to today’s tracksuits and shorts.

In the Victorian age, Sion Hill children went out of doors not to play games, but to walk sedately up and down the garden in coat and gloves and bonnet as befitted young ladies.

Games were considered

‘unladylike’ until, in the 1890s, a departure from ancient traditions was made by the introduction of a cricket set.

Notwithstanding the head-shaking of the older folk, the gloves first and then the bonnets and coats were discarded and outdoor games became a feature of school life at Sion Hill.