This article is from page 15 of the 2006-04-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
THE pupils and teachers of St Enda’s National School in Lisdoonvarna are celebrating this morning after four students from the school won the All-Ireland U11 Credit Union Quiz Competition in dramatic fashion in the RDS, Dublin, over the weekend.
After ten rounds of gruelling competition, the Lisdoonvarna team were level on 50 points with two other schools, Réalt na Mara Girls National School from Meath and Scoil na Croise Naofa from Waterford. The competition then went into extra time with three rounds of sudden death questions.
Amazingly, after the three additional rounds St Enda’s and Réalt na Mara remained deadlocked. As a tie-breaker, both teams were asked to guess the height of a statue located in London and, to the delight of parents and teachers, the St Enda’s guess was closer.
“We are absolutely delighted,” said school principal John Hehir. “To win an All-Ireland on any day is a fantastic achievement. We were expecting to do well having came so close last year. But this is really fantastic achievement.”
The Lisdoonvarna team, which consisted of Padraic Rubio-Lacey, Eimear O’Sullivan, Robert Hillary and Orla Burke, had already seen off more than 100 teams on their way to winning the Clare/Limerick qualifing round earlier in the month.
This latest victory means that the Lisdoonvarna team outdid more than 25,000 children on their way to claiming the title.
The school will receive some €1,200 (IR£1,000) for winning the competition, with each student receiving a DVD player.
“We hope to use the money to do something to encourage students to do more research, or to use new multimedia technology in some way,” continued Mr Hehir. “It might also be a nice idea to open a credit union account for each of the four students involved.”
The school, with a long tradition of producing quality quiz teams, had been in preparation for the competition for the last number of weeks.
“In the past two weeks, you could get asked any question under the sun when you walked into the school,” continued Mr Hehir. “Two of the teachers here, Maura Hanrahan and Bridget Crawford have been working really hard.”