Scotch College

Cup competition builds boarder's team spirit

The Wedderburn Cup, an inter-boarding house sports competition at Scotch, is proving to be a great team-building medium for our boarders, with keen competition taking place in a wide range of sports.

The Cup competition is held once a term for the first three terms of the School year, and is scheduled for 'closed weekends', when all boarders remain in the boarding house for the weekend.

Instituted in 1996, the idea for the Cup came from Graham Turnbull, a boarder in the 1950s from Wedderburn in north-western Victoria. Having been an active member of School House, Graham envisaged that the competition would help foster the great camaraderie and mateship that is such a feature of Scotch boarding house life. Graham had retained a link with the boarding house and School House in particular, as his sons Matthew and Andrew boarded in School House during the late 1980s.

The Wedderburn Presbyterian Church was being disbanded, and Graham managed to persuade the church elders to donate to Scotch a beautiful silver goblet and tray that had been used in the church. Graham suggested that the items be used as a trophy for sporting competition between the boarding houses. So the Wedderburn Cup began.

The Cup incorporates an almost bewildering array of sports. In first term it's swimming, volleyball, cricket, badminton and tennis; in Term 2 the sports are hockey, touch rugby, soccer, tug-of-war and table tennis, and in Term 3, basketball, football and mountain bike riding take centre stage. Sometimes more eccentric sports such as billycart racing are included in the program, just for fun! The really big event is the annual football match in Term 3, which involves boys from Years 10 to 12, and carries double points. Many a Cup competition has swung on the result of a hard fought footy match on the Main Oval. The Cup competition is also about pure fun. On each of the three closed weekends, the would-be singers among the boarders can strut their stuff in tune (?) with a karaoke machine; there are also Nintendo and foozeball (table soccer) games, as well as visits to the movies, go-karting and ten-pin bowling.

Peter Young (School) serving in the Year 11 volleyball match.

McMeckan House has so far proved to be the most successful house in Wedderburn Cup competition, winning it outright three times and sharing it once each with School and Arthur Robinson Houses.

Last year there was a thrilling climax to the competition, with School and McMeckan tied on 58 points after the final afternoon of competition in Term 3. It was a fitting conclusion to the 2002 Wedderburn Cup, which had once again helped to develop competitive and team spirit in the boarding house.

David Ashton