A MONUMENTAL weekend has approached for the New York Ladies GAA Gaelic4Girls program. This program, which began back in 2003, with much thanks to the foresight of Nollaig Cleary, its current chairperson, and Pauline Coll, its former development officer, has grown in leaps and bounds and continues to do so.

Its growth has been so tremendous that the necessity to form a local club, along with the Rockland club, arose, and early in the 2008 season St. Brigid's LGFC of New York was formed.

St. Brigid's and Rockland, in conjunction with the New York Ladies GFC and Gaelic4Girls, were then approached by three clubs in Ireland to host an underage tournament at the end of October. The work on this tournament began during early summer and the organizing committee, under the leadership of Waterford native Eugene Brophy, was put together, and they have worked fervently over the last six weeks to fine tune everything.

This is the first opportunity that the New York County underage program has had the opportunity to host teams from Ireland, and they are extremely proud of the chance to do so at Gaelic Park on Saturday and Sunday. For the past three years their under-14 county team has participated in Feile, which has been hosted by Belturbet, Co. Cavan, Ballinamore, Co. Leitrim and Arklow/Geraldine's in Co. Wicklow, whom they are proud to have as one of their guests on this upcoming weekend.

The under-16 county team was hosted by Ballymacarbry, Co. Waterford this summer and also played against teams from Cahir,

Co. Tipperary and Ballylanders, Co. Limerick, both of whom New York will play host to on this weekend.

The weekend promises to be fun filled with lots of exciting football in store, as with the under-14s both Arklow/Geraldines and Cahir were Division 3 finalists in Feile 2008 and New York was a Division 4 finalist.

The under-16s games will be very exciting as Cahir were finalists in the cup division of their tournament and Ballylanders and New York were the plate finalists.

The schedule of games over the two days provides for all age groups which includes their Rockland and St. Brigid's under-8s, under-10s and under-12s, and it is urged that all come out and show support for all those involved.

The schedule of games can be viewed at www.nyladiesgaa.com

With such an undertaking sponsors and volunteers are their backbone. To assist in any way contact Eugene Brophy at 914-469-1610, Nollaig Cleary at 917-407-9939 or Mary Murphy at 914-439-5124.