Their famous uncle is a World Cup bronze medallist, a three-time League of Ireland champion, Irish Footballer of the Year and one of Galway’s most decorated footballers of all time – but even Colin Hawkins could never hope to match the sporting versatility of his niece and nephews.

Because the Devitts – Sam (10), Dylan (8) and Amy (6) – have just rattled their way through the entire alphabet of sporting endeavours . . . and all to show their support for their uncle and aunt.

Colin, part of Brian Kerr’s U20 squad that finished third in the 1997 World Cup in Malaysia, has been public on his own battles with Multiple Myeloma Cancer after a shock diagnosis at the start of last year.

With advanced medical treatment, along with a fantastic positive attitude, he recently got the great news he is currently cancer-free – but in a devastating second blow, his wife Elaine, is now receiving treatment for breast cancer.

So Sam, Dylan and Amy – with a little help from their mam, Barbara, who is Colin’s sister and married to dad Willie, living in Drum – wanted to show their support and do their bit for charity at the same time.

They came up with the Devitt Alpha Sports Challenge – taking on 26 sports to match all the letters of the alphabet.

In the end they did 27, because ‘R’ came in for both relay running and rugby, but the young daredevils did everything from athletics for ‘A’, diving into icy waters in December – and indeed, to solve their ‘J’ dilemma, they jumped off Blackrock diving tower two weeks before Christmas.

They even overcame the problem of those tricky letters that didn’t have an obvious sport by undertaking a very energetic game of Xs and Os for ‘X’, and a martial arts discipline called Qigong to get over the issue with ‘Q’.

Just as importantly, the trio set themselves a GoFundMe target of €5,000 for the National Breast Cancer Research Institute – and already they’re a thousand euro past that.

Caption: Young stars…Dylan, Sam and Amy Devitt in the midst of their Devitt Alpha Sports Challenge.

Get the full story in this week’s Connacht Tribune, on sale in shops now, or you can download the digital edition from www.connachttribune.ie. You can also download our Connacht Tribune App from Apple’s App Store or get the Android Version from Google Play.