From Antigua to Zanzibar - via Catterick
OA Bulletin - Autumn 2007
Andrew Grant
Headmaster
Over the summer, our staff and students have been active in three continents and three hemispheres (if I’m allowed to double-count hemispheres as North/South and East/West) which must be something of a record.
To start with things closest to home, the Duke of Edinburgh Award section were busy with 20 pupils completing their qualifying Silver expedition at Pen Arthur in July in very challenging weather and another, smaller, group doing the same in the Chilterns in what finally passed for summer weather in late August. Both groups navigated well, showed sensitive camp-craft and passed successfully. A group of OAs also completed their Gold expedition in the Brecon Beacons under the aegis of the CCF, who had an exceptionally intrepid summer. With half an eye on the, then forthcoming, trip to Tanzania, 60 armycadets plus staff returned to Wathgill in North Yorkshire for this year’s annual summer camp, where I spent a very enjoyable day in their company high in the hills above Catterick. As always, the highlight for staff and cadets was the overnight exercise, where the cadets mounted a 36-hour counter-terrorist operation. In the summer-long competitions between the 60 or so contingents that visited the camp over a three-week period, our A teams won both the ‘march and shoot’ and the assault course, with the drill squad coming third, so had there been a classification for overall performance, St Albans would have been clear front runners.
A few days later, a group of senior cadets flew out for their greatest challenge yet, with an expedition to Tanzania, an important subsidiary aim of which was to improve the quality of life for orphans in the town of Mwanza. Our link was Ed Beavington, for the past two years Head of History at Isamilo School, who has returned to St Albans this year. £4400 had been raised in advance by the contingent’s own efforts, and was put to good use to help two different orphanages to provide the most basic needs for an education, including, for example, a generator, allowing the children of Watoto to have electric light for the first time in seven months. The CCF’s efforts in charitable fundraising help to bring the overall sums raised by pupils for charity to a staggering total in excess of £50,000 over the past three years. The group then went on safari in the Serengeti and were lucky to see large numbers of animals, after which the major challenge of the expedition loomed: the trek to the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, at 5895m the ‘roof of Africa’. Following that, recovery time on the beaches of Zanzibar was very welcome.
Earlier in the holiday, forty Lower School pupils visited Chatel in the French Alps and spent four days exploring France and Switzerland with trips on rack railways and cable cars, and a visit to the Mer de Glace glacier and ice caves near Mont Blanc and Chamonix. An 800 metre long luge and a trip to Nestlé’s chocolate factory with free samples were other highlights.
The major sporting event of the summer was the Caribbean tour by the First and Second cricket XIs, to Antigua, St Kitts and Nevis. They played a total of fourteen matches against schools and clubs on all of the islands, encountering many talented players among the opposition to make the cricketing experience a real challenge. Nevertheless, results were good, the Seconds winning two of their six completed fixtures and the Firsts, six of their seven matches, a number of which were held at test match venues: the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium (Antigua), Warner Park (St Kitts) and Grove Park (St Kitts). Off the field the group enjoyed the opportunity of sightseeing on each of the islands, catamaran tours and a jeep safari, paradoxically involving no jeeps! Perhaps that was a reflection of the laidback approach to life that these beautiful islands engendered and embraced by the hosts whose welcome was warm and much appreciated by the tourists. The tour closed the School cricket season with a very respectable 60% win rate for the First XI after some exciting matches in their domestic season, of which the most dramatic must be a win in the last over against the President’s XI on Founders’ Day and a win off the last ball against Haberdashers’. 60% was in fact the win ratio across all teams and the Under 14s won both their District and County Cups.
There were other important sporting successes over the summer term, most notably in tennis, where the highlight of our season was victory in the County Schools Championship at both Under 18 and Under 14 level. Our team of Arun Parkash, David Tott, Basil Walpole, Ross Hannah, Philip Ruis, Gordon Tveito-Ducan, Harry Hamer and Alex Terry (the last pair both First Formers) played some excellent matches and all four pairs got through to an all-St Albans final beating Haberdashers’, Aldwickbury, Chancellors and Verulam along the way.
Meanwhile, our ladies played in the annual schools Girls National Tennis Tournament, which attracts teams from the likes of Millfield Tennis Academy, Clifton, Loughborough High School and Sevenoaks as well as local rivals Berkhamsted, Queenswood, St Albans High School and STAGS. We knew the competition was going to be tough, but Rosie Hutchings and Katie Pollitt went on to beat Berkhamsted and St Albans High School convincingly before losing in the semi-final to a team from Millfield Tennis Academy, which is no disgrace.
The athletics season, too, was very successful. We regained the Senior District and Debbie Goulding, who has been equally important at the other end of people’s school careers – the very beginning, as our Admissions Officer - having joined the School within a term of each other, have both retired.
Aniket Gocoldas, who joined the Economics department in 2003, having been a student himself here, finally tore himself away from St Albans to join the staff of Highgate School, while Anna-Rose O’Dwyer, who joined us in the same year, left us to become Head of Politics at Reigate Grammar School. Grayson Jones, our Choral Director and Assistant Director of Music, who has been with us since 2001, has gained promotion to be Director of Music at Guildford High School and Stuart Terrell, who joined the Geography department in 1999, subsequently becoming a Housemaster and then Head of Third Form, is off to be Head of Geography at Caterham School. Sue Frearson retired after making a tremendous contribution to this School over 28 years as a fine teacher of Biology and an outstanding Lower School Tutor. She forged a longstanding link with King’s College London, taking forward the innovative ‘Thinking Science’ project and her skills in countryside management were a vital asset during the development of the Woollam Playing Fields. Sue put environmental awareness on the School agenda before the politicians could even spell the word and a thriving Conservation Group is one of her legacies. Finally, of course, as many of you will be aware, the Second Master, Simon Corns, having been a key figure at St Albans for the past thirteen years, moved this term to become Headmaster of Queen Elizabeth’s School, Blackburn.
I suspect it will not take long for his successor as Second Master, Richard Laithwaite, to get himself known among the OA community. Formerly Head of Upper School at Merchant Taylors’, Northwood, where he also coached the First XV, Richard is a graduate of the University of Lancaster and of the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. In an earlier existence, he played first class rugby for Liverpool St Helens and also for the Army and for England Students.
Meanwhile, the excellent work done by our new Development Officer, Kate Le Sueur, who can be contacted through a Facebook group The Official Old Albanian Club, as well as via the School, to trace ‘lost’ OAs, continues apace and will, I hope, be reflected in a larger turnout at the London Drinks Party at the East India Club on Thursday 15th November. This, remember, is now free for OAs still in full-time education and subsidised for those who left in the past five years and I hope to see a good number of you there.