Abingdonian 2020

77 www.abingdon.org.uk House Reports We saw off the term with our celebration assembly where we handed out house prizes, beautifully handcrafted by Charles Symonds, and then had our now traditional candlelit carol service in chapel. My thanks go out to Rev Dr Steer for leading the service, Joshua Ponting and Thomas Mennie for their readings, and Charles Geday and Mr Barber for accompanying us on piano. The Lent Term started with a bang as the fifth years produced some mock results to be proud of, but also showed great maturity in responding to any less positive results. The academic theme continued with our first competitions of 2020 focussing on debating. It turns out that some of our boys are pretty good at arguing (who knew!) with Luca Frauenfeld and Daniel McNamara making the sixth form semi-finals, Clem Davies, Arthur Larousse, Daniel Barratt and Max Siriwardene combining to make the semi-finals of the fourth year competition, and Jack Cabell and Toby Pinnington going one further to make the third year final. Unfortunately this is where the usual schedule of house events came to a rather abrupt end, but it was certainly far from the end of the story. As we moved into remote learning, the boys showed incredible fortitude, enthusiasm and dedication to make the most of the opportunities still available to them. Some real creativity was shown in engaging with the various competitions put forth, not least in Ollie Graham’s toilet roll challenge hockey video, and some excellent attempts at the extreme tea-making challenge. After many strong entries, Cai Evans finally took the plaudits for the latter. Another lockdown highlight was seeing how tutor groups came together over Zoom to try some different things. I enjoyed seeing the third years take part in a live bake off, various scavenger hunts taking place, and of course our whole house quiz which was eventually won by 6LNH. The absolute highlight for me though was the virtual sports day for third and fourth year students. Agreeing to take part myself soon became something to regret as the boys thoroughly showed me up in a range of shuttle runs, cereal box jumps, broad jumps and various catching and throwing events – we certainly have some athletic boys in the house! Whilst it may not have been the Summer Term we were expecting, I cannot think of a time where I have been more proud of the boys, or felt more privileged to work with them and their tutors. David Border