Senior Team Maths Challenge Regional Finals 2018-19

There will be some people out there who don’t realise just how exciting maths is.  Add in an element of competition and the joy would be complete for Jonathan and John from Year 13 and Brendan and Jake from Year 12, our wonderful senior maths team.  All they had to do was to get to Northgate and answer a series of fiendish questions, against the clock and often ‘in relay’ (working in pairs, one pair providing a solution to a problem which itself enabled the other pair to answer theirs, to open up a third problem to the first pair… and so on).  It was cracking good fun!

We were one of the top fourteen schools from Suffolk and Essex vying for a place in the national final, and vie we did… 90% in the first round; amongst the top six going into the final round (with no idea of where in the six we were…); and then the final relay round… and a good start… four ‘races’ to complete… and the first was perfection!  The second was … nearly.  The third… was a little harder.  The fourth?  Don’t ask.

But we had enjoyed ourselves!  It’s the taking part after all…  And so to the announcement of the top three.  Third Framlingham; second Woodbridge!  You could have knocked us down with a feather (and not just because we were so mentally exhausted); and first (perennial winners) Colchester RGS (next year…).  So our best result for years if not ever and a fantastic achievement delivered with genuine enthusiasm and received with astonishment and humility.  Mr Streat was so over-excited that he forgot to take a picture, so you’ll have to imagine our happy smiles as we proudly held our certificates.  He also thereafter very nearly ran Jonathan over in the car park, which would have been a shame, and scant reward for Jonathan’s sterling efforts all evening.