Eighth grade champions - 8 Forrest
(l-r) Javanni Waugh, Andre Tomlinson, Jervaughn Miller, Zhane Squire.
8 Forrest created a stunning upset when they registered a 22 -15 victory over crowd favourite 8 MacDonald(sic) at the 7th renewal of the Churchill Neita Interform Quiz Competition held in the library of the Melbourne campus on Thursday, March 13.
The annual quiz competition which is held amongst cohorts of the 7th to 9th grades on the KC Melbourne campus, serves as a feeder programme for KC’s Schools Challenge Quiz team by identifying and unearthing the talent pool at an early stage. The finals usually take place after several weeks of intra form eliminations. Two teams from each Grade eventually emerge to the finals. The patron is KCOB and prominent attorney at law, Churchill Neita QC.
On that Thursday evening Finals of March 13, 2008 no one amongst the packed partisan audience gave 8 Forrest a ’ghost of a chance’ against the formidable 8 MacDonald who had the 2008 Winston Stewart Spelling Bee champion Joel Nomdarkham and 5th place Je-Vaughn Winter in their four man line-up.
All 8 Forrest had going for them as a name brand was captain Andrae Tomlinson, one of the early exits (8th place) from the Winston Stewart Spelling Bee competition. He however looked confident and calmed his troops when 8 MacDonald employed delaying tactics by entering the library to much fanfare and only taking their seat last--just as Quiz Master Twan Beckford called the proceedings to order. From the word go, it was a ding dong battle and both teams were neck and neck until the KC champion speller failed to spell the word oblivious in time at which point 8 Forrest pulled away. Nerves clearly started setting in and it was obvious that 8 MacDonald was panicking. They committed yet another ‘largest island in the world error’ and Je-Vaughn looked to the sky. 8 Forrest vibes master Javanni Waugh sensing victory started applying the Caymanas Park ‘kasha whip’ as his team pulled way. When time keeper Ockino Petri shouted ‘Time!!!” the 8 Forrest bench erupted whilst the 8 MacDonald team remain seated in stunned silence. Seconds later and after regaining their composure, the ice was broken when 8 MacDonald captain extended a congratulatory handshake to his counterpart. The crowd cheered.
In other matches 9 MacDonald defeated 9 DeCartaret 19-14 & the calm DeCartaret overcame the surpised 7 MacDonald 19-12.
Scorer & time keeper: (in white shirt l-r) Hanif Howe, Ockino Petri
