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BRADEN FASTIER/Nelson Mail
The Waimea Intermediate team came second in a tie-breaker with the Australian team in the Intermational Kids Lit Quiz. From left, Maia Wingate, Alice Cameron, Florence Rogers, Teacher Lucy Pritchard, Che Harris, and Anya Cook.
A passion for books and a “remarkable” ability to recall details about them helped a group of students come within a hair’s breadth of becoming global champions.
Representing New Zealand in the international Kids’ Lit Quiz , four students from Waimea Intermediate in Richmond took on teams from South Africa, Australia, Indonesia and the US, only to be pipped at the post in a last minute tie-breaker – to come second to Australia.
Waimea Intermediate team coach, teacher Lucy Pritchard, said the students were in the lead at the end of the 8th and 9th rounds of the ten-round competition in Havelock North – but came a cropper with a question about the last lines of Charlotte’s Web.
“They were coming first … all the way through round ten, until the very last question which Australia got, which gave them two points which brought them up to first equal.”
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The team lead most of the way before being caught by Australia in the last round.
Australia then took the first two questions in the three question tie-breaker – a nail-biter watched by competitors’ family members via live stream and at the event at Havelock North Intermediate.
Waimea Intermediate were the first team from Nelson/Marlborough to go to the worlds, and the team had won the regionals three years in a row, she said.
Year 8 students Maia Wingate, Anya Cook and Che Harris, and year 7 students Alice Cameron and Florence Rogers were chosen to represent the school, with Rogers as sub, after a school-wide competition in March.
The team scored the most points at the school level from any group taking part in the annual competition, later seeing off 16 other teams to win the national competition, Pritchard said.
The Kids Lit Quiz was started in Hamilton over 30 years ago by retired Auckland University lecturer Wayne Mills, with around 10 other countries now holding the competition for 10-13 year olds.
The last time a New Zealand team won was in 2016.
It did “hurt to come that close”, Wingate said.
“[But] the Australia team was one of the nicest teams we had, and if it wasn’t us, they deserved to win.”
It was “kind of surreal” to have finished the competition which they had been prepping for the whole year, she said.
But some of the group planned to stay in touch with members of the Australian team, from Macquarie College in New South Wales.
The students said they were proud of their achievement.
“The questions were really hard,” Pritchard said
The 70 questions were in categories including non fiction, fictional places, authors, titles and animal folk tales – with some adult family members in the audience confessing they only got about five questions right.
“I think [the students’ success] is because they have been reading all their lives and their memories are remarkable,” Pritchard said.
They were met by relatives at Nelson airport on Sunday with a big banner that read “Fantastic”.
Cameron said she aimed to get to at least the same stage in next year’s competition, when she would be in year 8.
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