Geography students at MAGS have now won the annual Auckland Geography Teacher’s Association Senior Quiz three years in a row.
And they have been joined in the three-peat stakes by the Year 11 Geographers, who took out the Auckland Central section of the Maatangi Whenua Quiz for the third consecutive year.
The Auckland Geography Teacher’s Association (AGTA) Senior Quiz was held at St Cuthbert’s on Wednesday, 8th August, with 21 teams competing, and the pressure was on MAGS as defending champions.
With a mixture of rounds including both New Zealand and World Geography alphabet runs, Cityscapes, Where in the World and the infamous Play-doh round, competition was fierce.
The final round of sudden-death countdown clues was particularly nerve-wracking for everyone as was the wait while the top placings were announced in reverse order.
In the end though, the final tally revealed that not only had the MAGS A team (James Inkson, Hugh Malcolm, Hannah Zwalue, Harrison Zheng, who are pictured above) won by a margin of six points, giving us the trophy for the third year in a row, but also that the MAGS B team (Tom Barrand, Luke Owen, Angus Robinson, Shalin Shah) had held off Takapuna to finish second. Special mention was made to the A team’s record 25 out of 26 in the NZ alphabet round, and a challenge was laid down by AGTA: can MAGS do it again next year?
On Tuesday, 14th August, it was the turn of the Year 11 Geographers in the Maatangi Whenua Quiz. This is a National competition with rounds held across the country over the next couple of weeks. The Auckland Central section was again at St Cuthbert’s, featuring 16 teams from across the area. The quiz has rounds similar to the senior quiz but also includes skills-based rounds such as map reading and response to hazards.
The teams rotate through the tasks and as each is worth a different number of points the results are not known until the very end. Botany Downs were delighted to gain both second and third place but in the end MAGS Team 2 (Aidan Skinner, Ben Batchelor-Cook, Freeman McCall, pictured below left) finished 18 points ahead of the rest of the field. The MAGS Team 1 (Samantha Persson, Meadow Simpson, Katie Hadfield) finished 5th. As with the seniors, this is the third year in a row MAGS has been victorious and we now have to wait to find out how our score compares to those winners from the other regions.
