Teresa Gillespie

Teresa has been a teacher in Derry for the past 23 years, she is the longest serving teacher in her school which is an integrated school. This is a school where pupils from the Protestant and Catholic tradition have been taught together. Teresa has been running after school clubs for a number of sports for all of this time. Teresa also help to set up a netball club in the Derry area where she has been the head coach for 12 years. She volunteers her time to coach the junior and senior teams for 2 hours twice a week. Teresa has also been involved in coaching NI netball teams and has been a coach at all levels. She been to a number of European Championships and 2 world Championships. She travels to Lisburn and Antrim every other weekend, a round trip of over 150 miles per trip to train the squads. Teresa volunteers her time to coach in local primary schools and also gives time over to working with the primary school teachers in the area. Lastly Teresa is the mother of two teenage children and wife to Thomas who works for the NI Ambulance service in the local hospital. Sport is Teresa`s life and netball is her passion, but she is well known in the area for her participation in charity runs and has run in most of the Foyle Hospice runs and was photographed in the local paper for the first run 25 years ago and again this year with her daughter for the 25th year of the event.