DESPITE the challenges of the school year, to date, as the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic affects every school in the country, the staff and students at St. Joseph’s College, Enniskillen, were still able to celebrate academic excellence recently with the school’s annual awards night.

Always a popular highlight of the busy school’s calendar, this year’s events were a little different, as the school enacted a number of measures to help protect staff and students alike, whilst also acknowledging and celebrating the students’ efforts.

School Principal, Mrs. Helena Palmer, warmly congratulated all the boys who were presented with a range of awards, which paid tribute to their focus, dedicated studies and academic successes in a number of fields.

The awards celebrated the notable academic achievements of the boys alongside other key qualities, too, with a number of singled-out students awarded prestigious trophies to carry on the legacy of some of the school’s previous greats, who are immortalised with a number of memorial cups.

Mrs. Palmer thanked colleagues and staff for their efforts, but her praise and warm words were largely focused on the boys who, despite the difficulties of studying under Covid restrictions, and a year of various uncertainties for schools across the country, had still excelled in many fields, not alone academically.

The awards were just one aspect of the school’s busy activities in the lead up to Christmas, with the students of St. Joseph’s also busying themselves with a number of big-hearted gestures.

The students have supported a number of fundraising events and activities in recent weeks ahead of Christmas, ranging from fundraising for the likes of Enniskillen Food Bank, Action Mental Health and Pieta House with a popular school raffle, to also donating sweets and biscuits to a number of local nursing homes, including Millverne Care Home, Drumclay Transition Care Home and The County Care Home.

The boys even thought of other young members of the community, as they donated sweets, biscuits and toys to the Children’s Ward at the South West Acute Hospital.

The actions of the students for the whole community, young and old, was just part of the superb ethos and outlook of the students that the awards night was celebrating, with the praise for the awards for well-deserved academic success joined by Mrs. Palmer’s praise for all the school’s students.

The awards presentation for 2020 set the bar high, but there’s no doubt that the students at St. Joseph’s will excel even further by the time of next year’s awards.