On Tuesday this week Scoil Mhuire sent two quiz teams to compete in a quiz competition run by South County Dublin libraries in Lucan Library. A number of other Lucan primary schools were present and they were all competing for just two places in the South County Dublin finals. Over the past few weeks Mr. Roche had been running internal school quizzes to pick the two school teams. Over 30 children from 5th and 6th class tried out and this had to be whittled down to just 10.

Jordan & Oisin from 6th class along with Iris & Jane from 5th class were on one team. Eoin G, Eoghan & Jessica from 6th class along with Jack from 5th class were on the other. Rían from 5th and Eoin H from 6th were chosen as substitutes.

The quiz was a very close and exciting event. Scoil Mhuire Team 2 (Eoin, Eoghan, Jessica, Jack) were in the running from very early on to claim one of the two places in the final and by end of Round 8 were on 48 points, a one point lead over Archbishop Ryan Team 2. Scoil Mhuire Team 1 (Jordan, Oisin, Iris, Jane) were back in joint fourth place on 44 points.

However, round 9 changed everything. In this round the children were given a blank map of Europe and had to identified twelve marked countries. Scoil Mhuire Team 1 scored incredibly well on this round, getting 12 out of 12. However team 2 managed just 7 from 12. Archbishop Ryan 2 managed to score 9, while St. Andrew’s 1 secured full marks. This pushed St. Andrew’s out on their own into the lead, while our Team 1 leapfrogged others to gain a share of second place but our team 2 fell back into third.

The dramatics continued in the final round where Team 2 redeemed themselves scoring an excellent 7 out of 8 with team 1 scoring 6 from 8. St. Andrew’s 1 were the only team with a perfect score and claimed victory and the first qualifying place for the South Dublin finals, leaving five teams, including our two teams, in joint second. This meant a five way play-off for the second qualifying spot. Our two teams triumphed in this playoff round scoring 5 out of 5, with their nearest challengers scoring 4. So this meant another playoff round with Scoil Mhuire’s two teams facing off against each other.

There were four very tricky questions in this final play-off round and Team 2 (Eoin, Eoghan, Jessica & Jack) edged out Team 1 (Jordan, Oisin, Iris & Jane) to book their place in the finals with a 2-1 win. It was an incredibly tense and exciting finish to the quiz with both Scoil Mhuire teams performing exceptionally well. The finals will take place Monday next (23rd) in the County Library in Tallaght. We’ll keep you posted on how they get on.