THE 77th annual Mount Gambier High School and Glossop High School exchange took place last week.
The competition looked a little different in 2022, with the recent rebranding of the Riverland High School to the Berri Regional Secondary College earlier this year.
Renamed the Berri Exchange, Mount High claimed the overall honours in both the sporting and debating disciplines.
The exchange ran with the same format it had over the past two years due to the ongoing implications of Covid.
Sporting matches were held in Bordertown across a full day of competition on the Wednesday, while the debate was held virtually the day before.
That enabled the two schools to travel – meeting half way – to compete in basketball, soccer, football and netball.
This year the sporting cup was renamed in honour of the founding Mount Gambier High School principal, as The L Carthew Sporting Cup, while the debating prize was renamed The W Symonds Debating Shield after the Glossop principal.
Students travelled to Bordertown to participate in the sporting events of the exchange.
The day had an unfortunate start, with the first scheduled matches postponed due to condensation on the basketball court which left it wet and unsafe.
After some quick shuffling of events, the competition was underway with the Girls B Netball and Boys Football.
Both of those games were won by Mount Gambier High to give it a handy 2-0 start.
The A Netball followed with Mount Gambier High School again proving too strong.
After a short break for lunch, the Boys Basketball took place at the Bordertown Primary School gymnasium.
Thanks to the Bordertown Primary School which made its facilities available at short notice, the two games of basketball were able to take place.
Berri won a close contest in the boy’s match, while the Mount High girls were too strong to give their school an unassailable 4-1 overall lead.
The two soccer matches were both won by Berri, which left the final ledger at a close 4-3 in favour of Mount Gambier High School.
“We are proud of the students who represented our school on the day, with a number playing across two sports,” Mount Gambier High School special sports coordinator Kerran Wingard said.
“Our students performed at a high standard in all of the events and the competition was very close.
“We were excited to win the very first Carthew Sporting Cup.”
Following Berri’s domination of the debating competition since 2017, Mount Gambier High School was determined to finally take back the shield.
Marni Black, Callum McIntyre-McGregor and Anna Anbu debated strongly as the negative team in the topic “It is better to be truthful than kind” and were awarded clear winners for this year’s Symonds Debating Shield.
“The Debating competition has been dominated by Berri in recent years, so for our students to win that shield as well was a great achievement,” Wingard said.
The two schools look forward to hopefully returning to the full sporting and cultural program which has been a large part of school culture for over 70 years, with Berri due to host the exchange in 2023.
