At the end of January, the boarding community held the second Annual Boarders’ Quiz – last year, despite a strong showing, the PG team had lost out in the semi-finals to a confident IC team. Our captain from last year, Oonagh Thompson, having gone on to become captain of the School Quiz Team in the School’s Challenge, once again was at the head of this years’ team. The other team members were Kathy Stocker, Flo Wood – a member of the team last year - and Nina del Ser, all of whom had been chosen by their respective year groups as the most promising members!
We crowded in to a (perhaps surprisingly) packed Aisher Hall, and waited for the rounds to begin. A couple of somewhat predictable results started proceedings, with IC narrowly beating Lambardes, even with the help of a couple of members of staff. School House and Johnsons overcame Sennocke and GIH, despite their best efforts, and then it was time for the first real battle of the evening – PG against the Staff. This was not a fair fight. The staff had Dr Owen, Mr Kiggell, and Mr Anderson, and the star of Sevenoaks School quiz enthusiasm, former University Challenge contestant and all round keen quizmaster Dr Chris Martin. We tried hard, we struggled, but even with such a high calibre team, we couldn’t hope to beat the staff. But we got lucky. They’d only been involved to make up numbers – there are, after all, only 7 boarding houses. And so we progressed.
Our opponents in the semi-final were our conquerors from last year, and Oonagh was not going to suffer the humiliation of losing to them twice in a row. And we didn’t. Some stellar answers from Kathy and Flo – apparently an expert on spices – allowed us the edge, and we narrowly squeaked past them, into the final, where we would face School House.
This is where it became a little more competitive. Captain Oonagh came up against a former team-mate, but it was more than that. We now had a clear case of Thompson sibling rivalry. The introductions caused her no small amount of embarrassment. We had to state our name, favourite colour and favourite animal, and it went as follows:
“Hi I’m Patrick, my favourite colour is blue, and my favourite animal’s a tortoise”
“Did you have to say that? That’s just not fair. Hi, my name’s Oonagh. I can’t believe I’m going to have to say this, but my favourite colour’s blue, and I guess my favourite animal’s also a tortoise”.
After this, the real contest started. It remained close throughout, but sadly PG remained consistently behind, despite a late surge, where Nina’s exceptional music knowledge came into play, leaving the poor School House team more than a little bewildered. However, the final score was, in reality, an accurate representation, with School House retaining the title by the narrow margin of 180-150, much to the disgust of Oonagh, who has had it consistently brought up to her since, by her brother of course, despite the wildly different levels of contribution to the overall effort.
All in all, it was an excellent event, which was enjoyed by all those who participated, and we look forward to renewing our attempt to win next year.