A Recap of our Oak City Camogie & Hurling Invitational 2023 (plus the Southeast Division Championship match that started the day)!
The home event brought the GAA community together from all around the world on Saturday, with players and officials from the Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, Western & Southwest Divisions in person but also many family members tuning in to watch the live-stream from Ireland and beyond.
From the Opening Ceremony to the lovely little thunderstorm at the end, it was a phenomenal day. Thank you to each and every one of you for coming along, from the coaches & players to the referees, the volunteers, our medic, Trali Irish Pub, NC State University for the great Miller fields and the support staff who made sure we had full water coolers all day! SPECTATORS – thank you for coming out to support (& those online spectators too!!)! Thank you to our incredible MC Glenn Holland for keeping everyone entertained and up to date on our live stream!! Our Tournament Director (Patrick Curran) and support team including Elizabeth Davenport Guertin, Bethany Ebbitt and Tracy Berliant (with many others providing support along the way) did a great job planning the event and did their best to make sure that the players had the best experience possible on the day.
We had our Opening Ceremony at 9:00 with the National Anthems sung by Kelly O’Hara (US) & Margaret Rush (Irish). Chris Cooke played the pipes and led the flag-bearing players around the field. Thank you for adding so much to the occasion – it was powerful.
The USGAA Southeast Division Jr C Football Championship followed the opening ceremony, with Raleigh Cú Chulainn defeating Charlotte GAA in a battle of a game, winning the SED Football Cup for 2023. This means that the Raleigh men’s football team will now go and represent the SED in NATIONALS next month!!
This exciting football game was followed by a day of Camogie & Hurling and the weather thankfully held off until late afternoon. Well done to the Raleigh Camogie ladies who were in the lead with just 3 minutes to go on the clock when the game had to be called due to lightning nearby. They proudly won the Connie & Gerry McCrudden Cup. Thank you to the other Camogie teams & individual players who travelled a long way and demonstrated some absolutely fantastic Camogie skills and camaraderie.
The Hurling games were also highly competitive. It had come down to two games to play before the thunderstorm hit, the runners up pint game and the final. The final would have been a Richmond Battery GAA Vs Raleigh Cú Chulainn game, and as it could not be played Richmond deservedly won the Cup having accumulated the highest points scored across the day.
Congratulations guys and thank you to all of the other participating teams for some very exciting hurling.
You can’t have games without Referees and we had some of the best on Saturday! Thank you to Alisha Aigamaua-Wilkinson from San Francisco, Scott Cooper from Florida and Stephen Power from Arizona with support from Caleb Harkleroad from Savannah and Josiah Hunter from COVA. Thank you also to David Styles who had offered to support but unfortunately had a play injury – hope you are fully recovered David.
Shout out again to the Global Games Development Fund ( Consulate General of Ireland, Atlanta ) for supporting the GAA Clubs in the USGAA – the funding we receive enables us to use Miller Fields for great tournaments like this one.
Thank you to our Club Sponsor, Kymanox, who are a wonderful supporter of all that Raleigh Cú Chulainn do and we really appreciate it.
It was such an enjoyable day and it didn’t happen without a huge amount of support from our club members and their friends/families. We are a lucky club!
The night continued in Raleigh Beer Garden – another post to follow for those photos!
