Pictured above: The Year 12 Geography team of Ben Batchelor-Cook, Samantha Persson, Freeman McCall, and Aidan Skinner.
MAGS’ Geography teams have successfully defended their Auckland titles for the third successive time.
On August 13, St Cuthbert’s hosted the Auckland regional round of the National Maatangi Whenua Year 11 Geography competition. Twenty teams from across the region competed in a range of rounds covering things such as Geography in the news, map and modelling skills, New Zealand and general geographic knowledge. The much-coveted trophy has been won by MAGS for the past three years and so there was stiff competition from other schools wanting the honour of taking it from us. With the scores counted at the end of the evening, one of the MAGS teams consisting of Melissa Barnes, Olivia Moody and Bohemia Schollum finished a commendable fifth while scoring the highest mark in the map round. However, it was our team of (pictured from left) Caleb Hall, Hamish MacGibbon and Ben Merlini that won the competition a massive 13 points ahead of second-placed St Mary’s, securing the title for the fourth successive year for MAGS.
On August 21, the AGTA Senior inter-school quiz for Year 12 and Year 13 Geography students again had MAGS as three-times champions and the other schools itching to take the title. It was to be a close competition between the 23 teams.
Our Year 13 team consisting of Jack Cavanagh, Matthew Ray, Lilly McCarthy and Amy Barker, many of them quiz novices, finished seventh-equal having done particularly well in the “alphabet rounds”, 26 questions whose answers cover every letter of the alphabet.
In previous years the MAGS Year 12 teams had gone to this competition to get practice and experience for the following year. However, this year’s team of Aidan Skinner, Freeman McCall, Ben Batchelor-Cook and Samantha Persson were quietly confident and at the end of the evening it transpired that confidence was not misplaced. They finished four points ahead of a strong Takapuna Grammar side and the trophy returned to MAGS in an unprecedented four-title winning streak.
Geography teacher Donna Hobbs said, “We are already looking forward to defending our titles again next year.”