Calabar's dreams of making a comeback in this year's Schools' Challenge Quiz were crushed yesterday when they were outclassed by a superb St Jago team.
In what could easily be described as the clash of the 'green giants', St Jago showed they meant business from the very first section of the match. It was clear from then that Calabar would have to fight tooth and nail if they wanted any chance of making it through to the semi-finals. At the end of the first section, St Jago were out front on 12, while Calabar were on eight.
Tried valiantly
The second section was where things went completely downhill for last year's finalists. Calabar struggled to answer the questions posed in this section and only accumulated 10 points. Though St Jago's performance in this round was not perfect, they did enough to maintain the lead and gained 16 more points. The scores going into the final section were 28 - 18, in St Jago's favour.
Though Calabar tried valiantly to stay in the game, it was already too late. They attempted several questions in an attempt to earn more points, but in most cases, this backfired. St Jago, on the other hand, added eight points to their score and though they lost a few points, they were still able to hold on to a commanding lead. The final score was 36-16.
Frank Weise, coach of the St Jago team, told THE STAR, "We had expected Calabar to come with everything, so we devised a plan and we followed through with the plan and we came out the victors. There are still some glitches and some errors, here and there, but hopefully we can do something about those."
Calabar's coach, Dean-Hugh Thompson, said of the match, "Obviously St Jago had a better game. They put in a lot of work. Our guys were more nervous and St Jago just had a better game."
Campion me rep still enuh. But dem nuh inna school challenge quiz. Dem probably fraid fi lose or we just cant bother. Mek other school gwaa fight it out. We a di best overall and dem know it.