Belvedere athletes: the founder

June 9, 2009 in General, News

javelin_01.jpgThe crowning of the Belvedere boys as athletic champions reminded a modest Dick Cremins SJ of his part in laying the foundations of this success. In the summer of 1951, Headmaster Rupert Coyle asked him to take responsibility for the College athletics team – he had already placed him in charge of “stick”, as after-class detention was known. There were plenty of detainees, but there was only one athlete, a javelin thrower called Lexie Tynan. After his first afternoon of practice he was banned from our ground at Jones’s Road because it was alleged that he risked spearing some Under-12 cricketers. Dick is (modestly) proud to think he kept alive the embers which have burst into such glorious flame. The following year he found himself in Mungret.