Abingdonian 2020

72 The Abingdonian Crescent House The Crescent House year started off fairly normally; the first half of the Michaelmas Term brought the trials and tribulations of house singing, but a stirring rendition of Down Under by Men at Work was enjoyed enthusiastically by the boys of Crescent, and in their minds contributed to yet another fourth place finish! The inter-house sports at the end of term also showed off the range of the boys’ talents. Brian Ho, Tong Tong Sukamongkol and Perry Tsai have been stalwarts of Abingdon School badminton over the years that they have been here, and have contributed great success to Crescent House teams too. This time round they capped off their careers in fine style, with Brian and Tong Tong winning the U18 doubles and Perry winning the U18 singles. This combined to make an excellent victory in the U18 competition, and contributed to a fine second place overall. In the pool competition, Dan Keeble (U16) and Tom Cammell (U15) played well to both finish second in their year groups, and were tied for overall first place on points. Harry Stephens and Alexander Wakefield came third overall in the U16 squash competition, despite both being U14s. At this point in the narrative of the academic year, I should be continuing with tales of success, both team and individual, over the following two terms, but of course from February onwards, everything changed. Normality disappeared. How does one write a house report when all the constituents of the house were scattered by the coronavirus pandemic to the four corners of the globe? How do you maintain the social cohesion that is so important, particularly in a combined boarding and day house, when the most that staff and students saw of each other was through Zoom? These are questions that colleagues and I wrestled with, and for which there are no definitive answers. Online quizzes and competitions all had their place, and I very much enjoyed seeing the imaginative entries in the Crescent House Toilet Roll Challenge - won by Mr Ball’s tutor group, closely followed by Mr Barnes’s group - and the Lego MOC (My Own Creation) challenge, in which Laurie Clark and Joshuah Ebner demonstrated their design talents. Virtual common rooms were perhaps less successful, but I very much appreciated the efforts of the Upper Sixth in trying to make them work. In fact, I was enormously impressed with the efforts that all the boys and staff of Crescent House put into making remote learning work as well as it did. The effort that everyone put in should not be underestimated, and is a testament to how adaptable and positive our students are. In particular, many of the overseas boarders overcame the dual challenges of time zone differences and overenthusiastic firewalls to work ‘as normal’ in a way that I could have never anticipated. Despite this huge endeavour, I have very much missed the normality of the day-to-day life of Crescent House. The buildings remained quiet, and lacked the hustle and bustle of daily interaction. The importance of boys from different years and different backgrounds mixing and engaging with each other has never been clearer than when it became impossible to do. Next academic year will bring its challenges too, with limited opportunities for boys to interact, but I am confident that the Crescent House spirit will pull through. I felt particular sorrow for the Upper Sixth and fifth year students who were unable to take their public exams in the summer, but pleased that so many were able to achieve excellent results nevertheless. At GCSE, Ethan Chen, James Healey, Isaac Tan and Edmond Wang all achieved the maximum 10 grade 9s, with Jacob Drew and Aryann Gupta achieving 8 9s and 2 8s, and Cameron Gouldstone achieving 7 9s and 3 8s. At A Level, Jason Ng achieved