Royal College emerged unbeaten champions of inaugural  Sirasa Pentathlon Inter-School Quiz Competition by winning the grand finale last week. The Royalists went on to outclass Mahinda College Galle, Mahamaya Girls School Kandy and Musaeus College Colombo in a nail biting final contest at Stein Studios Ratmalana.

Although they were trailing behind at the end of first few rounds, they hit back strongly to record a scintillating victory. The final scores were as follows

Royal           301

Mahinda       250

Mahamaya   194

Musaeus        47

As usual, the opening round of the competition was a test of general knowledge and table tennis skills. Two contestants from each school had to answer 5 questions separately while balancing a ping pong ball. However both Royalists failed to impress in this opening round.  Mahinda College Galle led the round with 40 points to nil.

The following round was all about testing speech, creativity and dramatic skills of participants. Royalists managed to put up a decent show narrating under the theme ‘Usain Bolt’. the scores awarded for this round were; Mahinda – 70, Mahamaya – 69, Musaeus – 67 and Royal – 66. At the end of first two rounds Royal was still trailing behind in fourth place.

In the 3rd round, teams had to correctly spell a particular English word offered to them separately with the help of their basketball skills. After going through some anxious moments, Royalists were able to spell their word correctly much to the delight of royal supporters. Royal and Mahinda bagged 90 and 80 points respectively in this round. Both Musaeus and Mahamaya failed once again.

Then came the penultimate round. The 4 teams were given 3 MCQs each. The teams were also given the opportunity to choose the field of their relevant questions using their dart skills.  Royal answered all 3 questions correctly with ease and used the double option wisely to collect the maximum 120 points.. Mahamaya too did well to bag 120 points while Mahinda  was able to score just  60 points. With the all important final round left, Royal took a slender 6 point lead.

Royalists went onto seal their victory with a stupendous performance in the final buzzer round. The speed, tactics and skills of young lads from royal clearly left other 3 schools speechless. Man of the Final Suveen Ellawala exploited the buzzer round options nicely to help Royal collect further 35 points.