Limerick school receives special visit from world-renowned climber

The students of Herbertstown National School received a special visit from world renowned climber Kenton Cool recently. 

Last month Cool climbed Mount Everest for a 19th time, a record for a non-Sherpa (Nepali native). He first climbed Everest, which is 8,848m high and located in the Himalayas of Nepal in 2004 and has summited it almost yearly since.

Last week the 51 year-old Englishman paid a visit to Herbertstown NS, in which he spoke to the students about the trials and tribulations of his life as a climber. 

Mike Fitzgerald, principal of Herbertstown NS was delighted that Kenton was able to visit the school and share some remarkable stories with the students.

Mike says it was 'a shot in the dark' to reach out to Kenton but says he was thrilled when the acclaimed climber agreed to stop by. 

"Kenton was touring around Ireland and the school got aware of that so we just reached out to him to see would he be available.

We saw that he might be passing our school at some stage because he was travelling from Tralee to Sligo.

So we said we'd reach out to see if he had time to come in to us. It was a shot in the dark but he came back and said he'd only be delighted to come in and we were very lucky because he's a very busy man with a pretty busy schedule," he said.

"He was actually in Nepal when we reached out to him and it was his secretary that got back to us and when she said that he'd fit us in we started preparing for his visit.

The kids started researching and learning about Mount Everest and all things associated with that and it all came together very well," he added.

Mike says that the school was very appreciative for the time and effort that Cool gave them.

"He was very good because he's a very busy man but he stayed with the kids for the bones of two hours.

In that time he talked about Mount Everest, Nepal, the Nepalese people and in the Sherpa people in particular who he has a great affiliation with because he works with them to help bring people up the mountain.

He also talked about the history of people trying to climb Mount Everest, explorers like Edmund Hillary and expeditions before that. 

I think he was really happy as well that the kids had the research done because he was able to bounce over and back with them between questions and asking them what they knew and he'd a great energy about him and the kids were just  enthralled.

To thank Kenton for his visit, the school decided to get him a special gift to mark his visit to Limerick.

"When we had the couple of weeks where we knew he was coming, we were trying to think of something nice and like anyone in Limerick we're obviously very fond of our county hurlers and footballers," he said.

We said we'd get him a Limerick jersey with the number 19 on the back because he was just after climbing Mount Everest for the 19th time and he really appreciated it.

His only concern was that he was heading to Sligo that evening and he was wondering would he get into any trouble for wearing it but we assured him that he would be ok!"