Glenmuir High School yesterday advanced to the quarter-finals of Television Jamaica's Schools' Challenge Quiz, after defeating The Queen's School, the last all-girls school left in the competition.

None who watched the first section of the match would have predicted the final score to be 34-20 as in this section, the girls from Constant Spring Road held their own against their very seasoned opponents. Both were able to handle most of the questions posed and at the end of this section, Glenmuir were on nine points, while Queen's were on eight.

In the second section, however, things went horribly wrong for the girls. They failed to capitalise on the opportunity to increase their points in this section and only got an additional eight points. Glenmuir, on the other hand, more than tripled their score in this section. Scoring an impressive 11 points in their final minute had a lot to do with this, but they did well in the other two minutes as well. After the judges' review, the scores were 34-16 in favour of Glenmuir.

Though The Queen's School tried to make a last-minute comeback, it was simply not enough for them to take victory. They attempted several questions in this round, but got three incorrect, making it almost impossible for them to catch up with their opponents. Glenmuir, however, must have known that they had the win in the bag because they did not do much in this section.

Thaddeus Davis, coach of The Queen's School, told THE STAR, "The match was easy. The round two match we played was much more difficult. They made some mistakes they shouldn't have made. We lost the match in the minutes."

Coach of the Glenmuir team, Howard McCalla, said, "The match was OK. We made sure we held the lead from the beginning and maintained it. We weren't overly aggressive in the buzzer section. I'm glad we moved on but we could have done more. Manchester is a good team and it is unfortunate that we will be playing another rural team, but we are going to prepare and see how best we can do."

The Glenmuir Team: Mark Sterling, Rojay Gordon, Darion Barton, Romario Thomas.

The Queen's Team: Tamika Wright, Shanice Nettleford, Felicia Tracey, Davida Dixon.


Next match: St Jago and Calabar face off in the quarter-finals.