Wrestling bids farewell to Ireland

Hello all, sorry for the delay in blogging but the last two days in Ireland were quite busy. Day 6 was pretty fun. We started the day by heading to the Guinness Storehouse for a tour. It was very interesting and there were several different aspects of the tour. At one point, I was able to take the challenge of making the perfect pour of a Guinness, which I clearly passed. An interesting fact I learned from the Guinness Tour was that the distillery has a lease of 9,000 years in the city of Dublin which is honored by the government. We also ate lunch at the storehouse and I enjoyed delicious seafood chowder.

From there, we hung out until dinner for the most part due to weather considering it was a rainy day. After that we ate dinner at Madigan's as a team. I ordered a meal of sausage and chips which was not very good. From there we headed out for the night and I personally checked out the Temple Bar area which was fun.

On Day 7 we had a very loose schedule. We all ate lunch at a restaurant together where I think the overall consensus was that it was the best food we had all week. From there we were free; many of us went around and picked up souvenirs and adventured around Dublin for the last time. At night we headed out to the Temple Bar area for one last time and enjoyed live music at many bars and had our last Guinnesses.

At this point I would like to throw out a special thank you to Coach Kemmy. It was difficult enough to have to prepare an overseas trip for 25 people, and then on top of that to have to supervise this group of knuckleheads is a difficult task on its own. That being said, if there was any man suited for this type of responsibility, Coach Kemmy is the guy. It was a good experience for all of us and hopefully everyone left a little bit more cultured and educated.

I would like to thank all of the parents and my teammates for your support throughout these past four years, and wish the RWU Wrestling program the best of luck in its future. Thank you and God Bless.

Signing off for the last time,

Chris O'Shea

Wrestling vs. the Celts

Celts vs. USA Match – Thursday, June 16, 2011 @ the Hercules Wrestling & Weightlifting Club in Dublin, Ireland

RWU 35 - Ireland National Team 4

Results

Jon Lemoine pinned Brian Breslin (1:45)

Conor Hayes pinned James Brady (3:01)

Mike Forlenza won 4-2 over Clinton Scott

Chris O'Shea pinned Mark Nequal 1:01

Collin Crowell won 12-2 over Soslan Tue

Jack DiBurro pinned Mario Ilyucic (0:56)

Mike Monson pinned Ali Beck (3:33)

Nick Cambi won 9-2 over Marcel Ijaouk

To view pictures from the match, click here

Wrestling sees the sights and sounds of Dublin

Hello all! Day 5 was an interesting day. Today we took a city tour of Dublin in a double decker bus. It was pretty cool but absolutely freezing up top in the open section. I would love to run off all the sites we saw, but in a bus I was not able to take notes and keep track of everything like I have been able to in the other sites. What I did notice was that Dublin is a very cool city with lots of pubs (O'Shea's and Fitzgerald's covering both my parents' names).

For lunch we were on our own and I ate at one of the fast food joints called "Supermac's" with Shane, Mike F, and Ryan L. Very interesting place, basically a knock off of McDonald's with both pizza and ice cream as well. Later that night we went and practiced with a team in Dublin. After practice we had a match with eight matches of some of their wrestlers vs. us and we ended up winning every match. Those of us who wrestled received medals which are pretty cool. After that we went home and ate dinner at a Chinese Buffet named Jimmy Chan's. The food was similar but a little different. From there we were given about two hours to check out the city and we got a brief taste of the night life in Dublin. Hope all is well and I will get back to you soon.

Chris O'Shea

Wrestling travels onward to Belfast

Hey everyone, I'm sorry it has taken me a while to write this blog but finding computers has not been easy. Day 4 was our last day in Northern Ireland, and we traveled to Belfast to check out the city. It was in Belfast where we ate lunch and were given the option to spread out around the city. I chose to eat at a small cafe with John Paul, Kevin, Nick, Frank, Dustin, and Johan and had a delicious sandwich which consisted of chicken and stuffing.

After that, we took a tour of the Belfast City Hall which was very interesting as it had a lot of history. Our tour guide was excellent and it was a good experience. There are excellent pictures from there, including Coach Kemmy in his King's seat. After that we started to make our way back home with some side stops. We first stopped at the place where the Titanic was built in Belfast. A local resident told us this joke while there "People used to ask where the Catholics were while the Protestants were building the Titanic.” The answer is, “They were all busy building the iceberg."

After that we traveled about an hour south and visited New Grange at the Boyne Palace. It is a structure that was built 5000 years ago and has been restructured to still exist today. It was literally a little tunnel you crawl into created by rocks all over the place. We then ate at a local restaurant. Joey Holbeche and I each had a delicious burger there and the food was very good. After that we traveled to Dublin and spent our first night at Paddy's Place. It is a similar hostel that is run by the same company. Hope all is well and I hope you all got to watch my Boston Bruins win the Stanley Cup in the states for me!

Chris O'Shea

Day 3 for Wrestling in Ireland

Hey everyone! Hope all is well in the states. Today was another great day! We started off with another AM practice with the Irish and Welsh teams. Their number one stud nicknamed "Muhammed Ali" showed us some moves and was really great at wrestling freestyle. After practice we got the bagged lunches again which were yet again pretty horrible. After that we traveled an hour and a half to the Bush Mills Distillery which was pretty cool. They gave us a tour and free shots at the end. The shots were disgusting and I was not really interested as it tasted really disgusting.

After that we had a BBQ at the hostel which was excellent. After being served slop the last two nights for dinner this tasted so much better and really got our night off to a better start. Unfortunately, Coach Kemmy didn't trust us to go out past 11 PM again tonight. This was a real bummer because we never got to experience the real experience in Derry which we all looked forward to in coming to Northern Ireland. We were all real upset considering we have no wrestling tomorrow. We wrestle in Dublin on Thursday which should be fun and luckily I may have the chance to have my uncle see me wrestle since he is a professor at the University of College in Dublin! I will also be allowed the chance to meet two of my cousins for the first time in my life which should be pretty awesome. We'll let you know how it goes from there. Nice talking to you!

Chris O’Shea