North Kerry H. B. Awards Night:
Well done to Tadhg Reen of Tralee Parnells under 14s, who was among the county players recognised at the North Kerry Hurling Board Awards night Friday in Ballyroe Heights Hotel.
The awards were streamed live on Facebook, we look forward to seeing the report from the night with further details.
GAA Anti-Bullying Policy:
Tralee Parnells endorse and promote the GAA Anti-Bullying Policy in our club. A number of officers, mentors and parents from Tralee Parnells attended the very informative Kerry County Board workshop on Anti-Bullying, held recently in Na Gaeil Clubhouse Tralee.
See details on our blog at https://traleeparnellshurling.blogspot.ie/ for further details including Section 9 GAA Code of Behaviour: Anti-Bullying Policy Statement, also the posters with further information which can also be found online at Kerry County Board.
AGM 2017:
At the 2017 AGM of Tralee Parnells the proposal was accepted from chair Dermot Reen, to not fill the position of Club President for 2018. This is as a mark of respect to the Cotter family, following the recent sad passing of our Club President Eileen Cotter.
PRO Report:
PRO Report to the 2017 AGM.
Online presence: With ongoing growth and development in mind, we have had for some time an ongoing strategy of making ourselves highly discoverable and as available online as possible to parents of potential recruits and similarly interested parties.
The online posting of weekly notes, Facebook and Twitter updates and so on are part of how this is progressed. Results are positive in this direction. For example in early November 2017, entering “Tralee hurling camogie training” in the most popular web search engine, yielded a first page of results, almost all of which link to our club and with our notes and Facebook postings highly ranked in SEO terms.
We are actively online at multiple platforms. At our blog http://traleeparnellshurling.blogspot.ie/, the Facebook pages www.facebook.com/TraleeParnellsHurlingClub/ and https://www.facebook.com/Tralee.Camogie, Twitter @TParnells, https://twitter.com/TParnells and a Parnells website at http://traleeparnells.wix.com/traleeparnells. All of these can be visited from laptop, desktop, tablet and smartphone.
Throughout 2017 we got some excellent reports from matches, blitzes and also from special events including Féile and County Development Squad outings. We mentioned these in the weekly notes that go the online and print media outlets etc.
All parents, mentors, players and supporters are cordially invited to email match reports to pro.traleeparnells.kerry@gaa.ie. Please use the same address for photos of teams and events.
These will be posted on the club blog at http://traleeparnellshurling.blogspot.ie/. For those without access to email, if you post the match reports to Facebook and share them to the Parnells Facebook page. We also regularly add some extracts of this Facebook content, to our weekly notes.
Publicity and Promotion Opportunities: A key medium term tangible asset targeted by our club is a Ball Wall that is easily accessible in the Tralee area. This would provide a physical anchor for our playing communities and a proof of our long term commitment to hurling and camogie development in our locale.
Milestone Events in 2017: The following are some of the events that provided great publicity and positive exposure to Parnells this year. This provided excellent material on a regular basis for our weekly notes and our various online channels.
– Minors County League 1B champions jointly with our neighbouring club Abbeydorney.
– Camogie games in Avondhu North Cork under 15 league including a groundbreaking victory away to Kilworth.
– A number of our under 18 boys compete with great credit in County Minor A Final, a high water mark that harks back tantalisingly close to the top level honours won by Tralee in 1918 and 1919.
– Under 14 boys historic first ever Féile trip. Many thanks to roving reporters for excellent accounts of the run in and the trip, including especially great reportage from Micheál Cassidy, wonderfully accompanied by on the spot photojournalism from Paul Cassidy.
– Under 14 girls win the Kerry 2017 B Féile in the spring.
– U10 boys win Kerry County blitz, going undefeated all day in Caherslee in the A division in a bravura series of performances.
– Under 8 and 10 Camogie growth with new players and mentors. Special thanks to Suzanne for some great feedback on outings that was included in weekly notes to
– Camogie mooted in Presentation Secondary Tralee for the first time due to the interest expressed there, of the growing numbers of Parnells and other local juvenile Camogie players.
– Awards Night With new milestones marked.
– All Ireland medals for Camogie under 14s who won their division in Dublin finals.
– More Tralee Parnells players again this year in County Development Panels including boys under 17, 16, 15, 14 and girls minor, under 16 and under 14.
– Ongoing Healthy Clubs positive initiatives.
Assistant PRO: The AGM is requested to seek the appointment of an assistant PRO to work with the incoming PRO.
With club numbers growing there is an ever increasing need to engage with new mentors, officers and managers as new teams come online including boys minors, girls minors, extra camogie team numbers in younger ages, new club initiatives including Healthy Clubs, progress on long term strategic plans etc, etc.
Ideally the proposed PRO team would carve up the brief, agreeing between themselves who would focus on areas such as weekly notes, social media, photographs, match reports, online presence, contacts with media, possible newsletters and other areas mentioned above.
Eileen Cotter RIP:
The PRO had the sad task of communicating recently in the weekly club notes, the news of the passing of Tralee Parnells Hurling and Camogie Club President Eileen Cotter.
We have many photographs in our archives, showing Eileen taking a very interested part in club activities.
We were glad to share some of these photos on social media again recently. As these photos show, Eileen enjoyed playing an active part in our club, whether it be presenting silverware at our blitzes, meeting our players, officers and members, or generally enjoying seeing so many local girls and boys playing these fantastic sports in growing numbers.
At the first AGM of the reformed Tralee Parnells, held at The Grand Hotel in Tralee in November 2012, the first person nominated and ratified was Eileen Cotter as club President.
In a significant link to the distinguished history of hurling in Tralee, Eileen has family connections to the long history of Hurling and Camogie in Tralee. Eileen’s father (Jerry ‘Unke’ O Connor) was part of the Parnells team that won county hurling championships a century ago. We offer our condolences to her son Dermot and family.
Dermot was regularly to be seen accompanying Eileen to Parnells events in recent years. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis.