Tournament of Minds

Out of the box thinking, team work and a healthy sense of humour have been the winning ingredients of the St John Paul College Tournament of Minds (TOM) team who have been named NSW Runner-Up in the recent state championships.

The team of Samara Satyanand, Lilly Gleeson, Alexandra Nealand, Kai Davidson, Kai Robinsen and Connor Gleeson impressed the judges when they competed in a modified Zoom competition held during the school holidays. Unfortunately, the TOM team had to enter with six members, instead of the usual seven, when key team member Angus Harris was unable to attend during the holiday period.

The revised State competition was held in a new format to cope with the demands of COVID restrictions and the team were lucky to be able to have the chance to compete at this level after winning the regional competition. The six members of the team went into training overload in the final weeks of Term 3 where they learnt to address the new online format and revised their team strategies to develop an interesting response to an impromptu question within a 15 minute time frame.

The team were marked on eight different criteria  and the judges awarded them in the excellent range for their team work, team strategies and creative response and they received highly commended in the other categories.

While they have now bowed out of the national competition they can be proud of their efforts as they competed against several selective high schools and elite private schools to receive Honours in their Literary division.

Linda Gleeson
Teacher