Dublin’s Sandymount Hotel has a Carolina connection
A former Tar Heel field hockey player’s family owns a hotel near the stadium hosting the Aer Lingus College Football Classic.
Many of the Irish fans at the Aer Lingus College Football Classic will yell “Go Heels!” for the first time on Aug. 29, but the Loughran family of Dublin has been cheering for Carolina for a long time.
That’s because Sinéad Loughran ’13 played field hockey at Carolina for four years, including on NCAA championship runner-up squads in 2011 and 2012.
Her family owns the Sandymount Hotel in Dublin, and they are excited about the Tar Heel football team playing Texas Christian University in Aviva Stadium, a short walk from the hotel.
“We love the Tar Heels,” said John Loughran, her father and the eldest son of the hotel’s founders. Gerard Loughran, one of her siblings, is the hotel’s director.
The Loughran family owns and operates the Sandymount Hotel, which will host Tar Heel fans during the Aer Lingus College Football Classic. (Submitted photo)
From B&B to four-star hotel
The hotel began in 1955 when George Loughran, a mechanic, and wife Rosaleen bought a small house on Herbert Road and turned it into a bed-and-breakfast. “The rooms went to paying customers, so there were five kids and my parents in the one room,” John Loughran said.
Over decades, the family bought several neighboring Victorian townhouses built in 1866 on the former site of the Old Haig’s Distillery. The Loughrans gradually merged eight of them and made additions to eventually create today’s 190-room hotel.
The hotel’s architecture reflects life in the late 1800s, when upper-class gentry lived in the townhomes. Its appearance was also influenced by George Loughran’s 1963 visit to America’s White House. Upon returning to Dublin, he had the hotel painted white. Today, the hotel’s middle portions are white, with exposed brick on the ends.
The family is proud of the hotel, Dublin and Ireland. But they are equally proud of the Tar Heels and excited about the football game.
“We’re very experienced with setting up tailgate parties. We’ll have food and drink outside and the Guinness will be flowing. Inside, we’ll have traditional music to create a true Irish atmosphere,” said Gerard Loughran.
Sinéad Loughran ‘13 found a way to say she still lives in Chapel Hill. (Submitted photo)
Sinéad Loughran’s Carolina experience
Sinéad Loughran was a standout athlete in field hockey and Gaelic football before coming to Carolina. When she attended a summer field hockey camp at Carolina before her last year in secondary school, coach Karen Shelton noticed her abilities and invited her to join the team.
Before sending one of his two daughters 3,600 miles from home, John Loughran checked to see if Carolina was a good fit, asking a friend with international field hockey experience and another who had attended the University. “They said that Carolina was the only place for her,” he said.
When Sinéad Loughran became a Tar Heel in fall 2010, her family began bleeding Carolina Blue.
She majored in communication studies in the UNC College of Arts and Sciences’ communications department. “What I learned in communications has been valuable, but being able to take classes at Carolina in other subjects, like exercise and sport science, planted the seed for me going into medicine,” she said.
Sinéad Loughran later earned a Master of Science from University College Dublin, then a Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery degree from University of Limerick. She’s now an emergency medicine doctor at St. James’s Hospital in Dublin. Skills she learned as a student-athlete — time management and the ability to shift quickly on demand — help her in the fast-paced emergency room.
While at Carolina, she had one more interesting experience: instructing a 12-year-old Erin Matson at a Carolina field hockey camp. Matson ’22 went on to become the most decorated player in program history and is now Carolina’s field hockey head coach.
