Around the College
NATIONAL FINALS
Bringing together the best school chess teams from around Australia and New Zealand!
ONLINE FESTIVAL OF CHESS Monday, November 29 - Tuesday, December 1, 2020
The Mary MacKillop Catholic Regional College Middle School Chess Team competed in the National Finals for the first time.
The Team consisted of Jeffrin Mathew, Andrew Martin, Harrisen Herbert, Zephyr Anderson and Lachlan Aulich.
There were a total of 29 schools in our Middle School Competition with 178 enthusiastic chess players from across Australia and New Zealand.
Monday started with our team rated 22 and by the end of Day 1 we were ranked 14th in the Nation.
Andrew was having a switched on day with the support of the rest of the team. The team were encouraging and competitive and the tension was high. The alert would go for each round to start and the team would switch into game mode – it is great to be a part of.
The support and advice given Mr Bhargava was taken on board, by the team, and I loved hearing them talk about the advice he had given, the previous week.
Day Two we played 3 rounds and the stats were being watched closely.
The team had set personal goals and a goal for the team.
Mary MacKillop Catholic Regional College Middle School Chess results we finished 12th in the Middle School National Finals.
An awesome effort.
Mrs Herbert
Debating
We have had a busy term with the commencement of the Year 7 debating training program and the continuance of a limited online DAV Debate Schedule. We spent much of the term getting used to the new online format of google meet debating! We had more wins than losses overall but probably learnt more from the losses! Being in this new format meant that we got to debate against teams from different parts of Melbourne and against teams with a greater range of debating standards.
In regards to the Junior Debating, we began the term with an Introduction to Debating workshop for the Year 7s in the Library with some games, debating theory and short speech activities. This was followed by a second work shop with a focus on how to prepare and conduct a debate. We formulated the Year 7 teams and the coaching teams who would work with them. We participated in two online debates. One was about the importance of participation awards (affirmative position) and another about incentivising moves to the country (negative). We ended up with one win and one loss and one best speaker award (Christian Chirgwin) and much was learnt about the complexities of point scoring in debates as well as how to tackle the various speaking roles.
We will end the term with a small Covid safe Celebration Ceremony complete with individual treat bag (lunches), the giving out of the coveted debate team member badges for new Year 7 members of the team and certificates.
