Ben Vincent -


English Alpine Championships During February Half


Term, Ben Vincent (8N) travelled to Bormio, Italy, to train for and compete in the 21st English Alpine Championships run by Snowsport England. The event attracts over 400 ski racers from across


England, the UK plus some international racers.


In the Slalom, he had an unfortunate equipment malfunction on the first run which led to a disappointing time, however, Ben picked himself back up to charge the second run where he posted an impressive 33rd place. He also competed in the Giant Slalom and skiied both runs well, finishing in 31st position. He was competing in the Male Under 14 category with over 60 athletes, many of whom spend the entire Winter in the Alps training on a daily basis so Ben’s result was particularly impressive given that he only trains on dry slopes in the UK and has limited training opportunities on snow


During the Championships, Ben also competed for his club, DHO, in the Night Parallel Slalom and was also selected to forerun the U10/12’s Technical Combi course.


Upon returning from Italy, he has had to quickly re-focus ready for the UK Summer Series which will see him competing most weekends for Team Snowtrax between April and October in National and GBR races as far afield as Edinburgh, Norwich, Wales, Dublin and Manchester. In preparation, he has just achieved 3rd place overall in the U16 Male Winter Series based at the dry slope in Southampton and a 2nd place in the Southern Region Ski Cross competition in the Under 16’s.


Maths Department News


National Cipher Challenge I am pleased to announce that two of our students, Jacob Hand (yr 10) and Ken Pickard (yr 7), did very well in the National Cipher Challenge run by Southampton University. Ken scored 100% in the part A challenges and received his certificate at the awards ceremony at Bletchley Park on


15th March. This is particularly impressive as both students competed as individuals against other teams of students from other schools across the country.


AQP


UKMT Challenge On the 22nd March, I and three other students, Ken, Alex


and Tom, took part in the 2017 UKMT Regional Challenge at Parkstone. After having a few warm up questions, we started the actual event.


The first round involved a 45-minute test. It consisted of 10 questions ranging from easy to very difficult, and were each worth 6 marks. We split the questions in two and worked in pairs to save time and after 45 minutes and a few minutes of marking, we found out we got 48 out of 60. This was a very good mark as we only got two questions wrong.


After a small break we started the second round. This consisted of a set of questions that were answered in pairs. The answer to the previous question was used in the next question and so on. We started off well getting 15 out of 15 in the first two. But after a slight slip up, we dropped 8 marks in the next two.


The next round was by far the best, and was called the cross number. One pair got the down clues and one got the across clues, some of which needed the other in order to answer. We were given 45 minutes but we only needed 25 despite the fact we scored an incredible 56 out of 56.


After a short lunch break, we moved onto the fourth and final round of the day, the relay round. This was a set of questions that pairs tried to answer in the 45-minute allotment, but the catch was, you couldn’t start the next question until the other pair had answered the previous question. It was close, but we managed to get the 49 questions answered in the short amount of time, only making 1 or 2 mistakes.


We knew it was close between us and Bishop Wordsworth as they had done similarly in the previous rounds, but they were just ahead. We managed to beat them in this round by two marks, but they were already four ahead. This meant that we finished an amazing 2nd out of 18 schools, and were at least 30 marks ahead of 3rd place. This was an improvement from 5th place last year. Overall it was a fantastic day and a great experience from which I could improve and develop my maths skills to allow me to go further with a subject that I love. Next time, we hope to be able to beat Bishop Wordsworth and finish 1st meaning we would progress to the national finals. I would like to say a big thank you to Miss Pipe, who took us to the event and stayed with us on the day, but also ran practises at lunch to improve our skills.


By Roscoe Oliver 9D


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12