As Tournament of Minds national winners in the secondary division of ‘The Arts’ competition, the Diocesan Year 9 team earned a place in the annual international event in Australia. This year, it was held in Melbourne over Labour Weekend. This was the first time a Diocesan team had qualified for this so no one was sure what to expect, but everyone was extremely excited to be going. Wearing a silver fern and a kiwi on a black t-shirt is always an honour to cherish.
Unfortunately, the teacher coaches were unable to travel with the team so Mrs Fisher and Mrs Berry Eden undertook to fill these gaps so the students could represent both Diocesan and New Zealand. Mrs Carryer’s advice was that ‘The students will be fine, they know what they are doing’. She was absolutely correct, the team was thorough in their preparation and scoured the rules to ensure that every single point they could get and not inadvertently lose was in the mix. They spent time considering strategy and analysing how their teamwork could be more effective and the teachers were impressed with their maturity in how they gave feedback to each other and responded to feedback given to them.
The official event started at the Melbourne Convention Centre on Friday with an opening ceremony where each Australian state was introduced and as a team delivered their state chant. As a New Zealand team, we stood and sang Tutira Mai, with the actions and accompanied by the ukelele. The applause was huge and we were invited onto the stage to do a repeat performance so the whole audience could see it. As part of the experience in Melbourne, the rest of the day was spent in a team-building exercise, an amazing race-style scavenger hunt around Melbourne completing challenges in well-known locations and submitting photos or completed tasks to race organisers and the game app at designated spots. From navigating to problem-solving to creative photos and puzzles, it was an exciting way to experience the city- even in 30-degree heat.
Saturday was competition day and the team made their way to La Trobe University where they were given a challenge to creatively solve in three hours before presenting it to the judges and the other competing teams in the secondary Arts category. During the three hours of preparation time, they were also given a ten-minute spontaneous challenge to respond to being given the challenge, use teamwork to come up with ideas and a presentation that fitted the strict criteria and also present to the judges. No mean feat! The combined scores would determine the winner and the two Honours Awards to be presented that evening.
The challenge set was to use the articles in the box provided to create a piece of street art in a tunnel that showed the uniting of two places. They had to use music, dance and artwork to represent the places, explain the significance of the artwork and show why the two places needed to be connected. The Dio team enthralled the audience in their 10-minute presentation with their use of ukelele and Chinese harp and demonstrated the need to retain cultural identity and stand confidently between two worlds as New Zealanders of Chinese descent. Although new to the international stage with TOM (Tournament of Minds) we were quietly hopeful given the responses to the performance.
We had to wait until after the official dinner that night to attend the prize giving and were thrilled to be awarded an Honours Award. The judges scored them as Excellent in all but one category, commenting on the excellent teamwork and overall quality of the dramatic performance.
Congratulations to the Year 9 TOM team members: Jean Wang, Eva Zheng, Iris Guo, Milu Lu, Ming Cai, Rebecca Qiao and Rebecca Wang on a hugely successful year in Tournament of Minds.
