News Spring Term 2010

Year 13 pupil Will Carrick Smith has been playing Rugby for the South West 18 group. Seventeen year old Will is six foot eight tall and weighs eighteen stone and has been playing first team rugby for the last two seasons. Will was selected for Devon to play as a lock-forward and his performance impressed the selectors so much that he graduated to the South West team. At this level he played two more matches against the North and Midlands.

For this term the Special Art Status pupils have been visiting local artists in their studios to gain a better understanding of the artwork close-up as well as experiencing life as a practising artist. Kathy Ramsay Carr was kind enough to show us round her Cullompton studio and her new collection of abstract landscapes and some works in progress. Kathy spoke of the mood, composition and use of colour in her work and will no doubt have inspired the pupils to create their own painted landscapes.

The girls from North Close have held their annual sale of Valentines roses for pupils and staff in order to raise funds for the Breast Cancer Charity. In total the girls sold over 600 roses and managed to raise over £400 for the charity. Ably assisted by senior Matron Mrs Wilder and head of house Sherry Tang, the roses were distributed during the lunch hour ensuring that romance is still alive and kicking at the school.

Jack Maunder has been selected for the full England Prep Schools Barbarians. Twelve year old Jack, following trials in December, went forward to represent the South West at Millfield School. Having successfully overcome this hurdle he went to the home of rugby at Rugby school to represent The South V The North. Following this game the young scrum half had impressed the selectors enough to be invited to play for England. He is now looking forward to his first match V Ireland over the Easter holidays. Coach Rob Holman said Jack had done very well at all levels of selection.

The Yr 9 L1's recently visited the Exeter Phoenix Gallery with Miss RM Stephenson and Mr R Matthew to see the 'Mind Over Matter' exhibition. The trip was taken in order to inspire the class for their sculpture project, for which they have been asked to create creatures out of junk. Everyone enjoyed the show and loved interacting with the kinetic pieces of work!

Following rigorous trials in December at Wellington College Berkshire, Barney Loader was selected for the South of England Independent Schools Barbarians Team. Barney, who has played for two years in the 1st XV, went on to represent the South V North at Moseley RFC before being selected for the full England squad. He usually plays at fly half but has been used as a full back in the recent match versus the Irish Exiles, which England won 22-16. Barney also played versus the Welsh Crawshays U19 XV at Old Deer Park in London, which they won 34-5. They now move on to play Cambridge University freshers before departing on a two week tour of Malaysia and Singapore over the Easter holidays. Barney has represented Tiverton RFC on a few occasions, treading in the footsteps of his father Paul who also played for the RAF. Barney has a place at Manchester University and hopes to continue playing whilst there.

Local artist Roger Hann kindly agreed to visit us recently, to talk to the pupils with Special Art Status. Not only did he bring some of his huge canvasses that he had in his studio, but the means to display them as well, as he is so used to showing his work. He gave a fantastic lecture to the pupils, which thankfully included the importance of listening to your teachers! The highlight of this must have been when he invited Jodie Atkins to actually paint on a canvas he had been working on for us.

Henrietta Mills and David Malcolm have recently gained Oxbridge places. In a very competitive field with enormous numbers of applicants both pupils did well to secure conditional places for their chosen courses at Oxford. David is set to join Brasenose College to read History and Politics and Henrietta is destined to read Medicine at Jesus College beginning in October.

Sixteen year old Tristan Evans of Broadclyst has just been selected in the final ten of the National Young Drummer of the Year competition. The finals will be held in Leamington Spa on 24th January and Tristan will have to perform a two minute solo and play two prepared sets with a band. Tristan has been practicing frantically since he was told of his selection. He has been playing the drums since he was seven and achieved his grade eight at the age of twelve. He has had a master class with Karl Palmer of Emmerson, Lake and Palmer and attends lessons with teacher Simon Lomax. His drumming hero is Keith Moon of the legendary band The Who and his ambition is to be a professional drummer, but he would also like to change people’s perceptions of drummers. He is very upbeat about his prospects and if he manages to win he will receive a trophy, sponsorship and the opportunity to tour. The competition is sponsored by various music retailers and Drummer and Rhythm magazines.

Two year ten pupils, Dylan Penberthy Hutchings and Jack Dart, have been selected to tour South Africa with the Devon U15 Cricket team. The eight match tour will take place over three weeks in February 2010. They will start in Johannesburg before transferring to Cape Town to finish their games in Western Province. En route they will be able to do some sightseeing and will spend a day in the famous Kruger Game Reserve. Dylan is currently the captain of Heathcoat’s U15 and is a leg spin bowler. Jack is a middle order batsman and plays for Whimple. Both boys have also represented East Devon.

This was a very closely fought competition, with some very strange results, but an excellent outcome as Blundell’s were Runners Up and are now going to the National Indoor Finals on January 16th/17th in Birmingham.
In indoor hockey it is all about the number of goals that you score and, although we conceded a few, we were easily the second highest scoring team at the competition and with three of the other matches ending in draws, this really played into our hands. We gained in experience as the day progressed and all the squad contributed to the end result. Cat made some excellent saves in goal and there were some great tackles from Martha, Thea and Charlotte.
Goal scorers: Hannah 3; Elly 3; Sophie 2; Polly 2; Martha 1
This is the first year that England Hockey has decided to separate clubs and schools, so the final will be schools only.

Blundell’s U16 won the Devon section of the National Schools hockey tournament recently, beating West Buckland, Torquay, Exeter, and Plymouth College. This qualified them to represent Devon in the West of England tournament held at Clifton College. Eight counties were represented and the tournament was held on a league basis .The Blundellians managed to defeat Truro3-0, Cheltenham College 2-1, Hereford 3-0, and Marlborough 2-0. They drew with Sherborne 0-0 and lost 0-2 to Millfield. This left them as runners up and qualified them for the National finals after Christmas. Coach Guy Bucknell was delighted with the girl’s performance, particularly as the playing conditions were atrocious. Many teams weakened as the day progressed but Blundell’s seemed to grow in strength due to the excellent leadership of West of England player Hannah Watts.

It is hard for any director to direct a musical that is firmly embedded in social consciousness through a famous film production. No stage performance could rival the richness of Cecil Beaton and Gene Allen’s design or Rex Harrison’s portrayal of Higgins but the cast and crew of Blundell’s My Fair Lady certainly gave it their best and succeeded in delighting audiences on all three performance nights.
Particular credit is due to Jeremy Manning who, by common consent, made an outstanding Professor Higgins. Tori Doyne-Ditmas sang beautifully and brought a thoughtful wistfulness to the role of Eliza. Guy Potter was a superb, bumptious Pickering and carried on to complete all three performances despite illness - what a trooper! Julian Strong brought his considerable stage presence and singing talent to the role of Doolittle and Henrietta Mills and Agnes Clark gave excellent performances as Mrs Pearce and Mrs Eynsford-Hill. This was a musical with elegance and sophistication. The chorus worked hard to master some challenging dance routines and the back stage crew, under the direction of Miss Fordham, were well drilled. The huge team effort made by everyone involved brought set, sound, lighting costume and performances together to give audiences a production that will be remembered for some time to come.

The annual 1st XV fixture versus Clifton College was played recently for the Charlie Colquhoun memorial cup. Charlie was an Old Blundellian who taught and Housemastered at Clifton for many years. He was heavily involved in the sport at Clifton and his family presented a cup for both schools to compete for each year. The inaugural match was won by Clifton but this year there was a fine victory for Blundell’s. In extremely windy conditions both teams took time to settle and it wasn’t until the second half that Blundell’s started to dominate. With some fine running rugby, tries from Toby Lett, Barney Goss and Angus Yard saw the final score reach 22-13. The cup was presented by Mrs Colquhoun to Blundell’s skipper Matt Goss.

At the South West Schools Show Jumping we had the best performance ever in terms of consistency, with both teams finishing with zero penalties over two rounds. Indeed Blundell's was the only school to do so out of over 25 represented there. The overall winners were then decided on time taken to complete the second round and this meant both teams missed the coveted 1st place by just a few seconds.
The team of Jenny Boylett, Lydia Stuart, Alexa Batting & Rupert Batting were third in their class, with the team of Amy Clarke, Maddie Simonson, Alexa Batting & Rupert Batting completing as South West Runners-up in 2nd. A special mention to Jenny and Lydia who performed brilliantly at their debut in the Blundell's Equestrian team. Mrs Batting was delighted with their performance. They competed with professionalism and flair and are a credit to their school.

The Gornhay astro was formally opened by David Hacker on a windy October day. David has over 100 International caps, is a former GB Player of the Year and represented Great Britain in the Sydney Olympics. Many years ago, he was also one of only two Welsh Internationals to represent GB in the World Students Games - the other being our very own Mrs Klinkenberg! The day was completed by a match featuring OBs and staff versus the current 1st XI.

Zia Ferris and Maggie Wong of last year's U6 have had remarkable success in an international art competition. Two photographs from their A Level coursework have been shortlisted into the top twenty for the Saatchi Gallery/Sunday Telegraph Schools Art Prize from thousands of entries. Their work will be on show at the new Saatchi Gallery, London, next month in a special exhibition taking place from 3rd-13th December, after which time the final winning works will be announced. The Sunday Telegraph will be running a story about it this weekend.

On Thursday 17th September a group of Yr 10 students were taken to Exeter airport for the Future Engineers aviation themed experience day. When we arrived we were taken to the Murray Walker building, the current head maintenance base for FlyBe. There we spent the morning taking a tour of the different maintenance parts of the facility and how FlyBe manage to keep a fleet of 77 aircraft in the sky. A fantastic time was had at the airport especially coming joint 1st in an end of tour quiz!
For lunch we travelled to Exeter University where we spent time at a careers lunch with representatives ranging from Rolls Royce to Airbus. The afternoon was spent touring the aeronautical facilities at the university where we learnt all about how the construction of aeroplanes is a mixture of physics and very smart materials. It was a really worthwhile trip.

Jumping with style is gaining in popularity, as was seen when over 20 schools competed at Millfield for a chance to represent the South West at the National Schools finals in November. JAS provides a challenging course of both showjumps and xc fences, with marks awarded for time and style as well as the usual jumping penalties. Danny Anholt, Director of Riding at Millfield, had provided a technical course of 20 fences, including, bounces, skinnies & corners, with several ridden from off-set angles, which certainly proved challenging for the teams competing as only 2 teams out of 20 got all 4 competitors around. However, the Blundell's team of Alexa Batting, Rupert Batting, Maddie Simonson & Saskia Simonson continued their recent run of success in eventing with a convincing win at Intermediate level, in spite of impressive competition from several schools known for their equestrian talent. Rupert also won best individual with a clear round and no time penalties, combined with a 95% score for style. The team now go on to compete in the UK National Schools Championships to be held at Keysoe, Bedfordshire in November. Results: 1st Blundell’s, 2nd Millfield, 3rd Millfield, 4th Stonar, 5th Wells Cathedral, 6th Millfield.

Chris Bodington, Charlie Silcock, Charlie Howe and Andrew Kellett finished 4th (out of 60 schools competing) in the National Combined Pairs Shooting Finals at Bisley. Blundell's has an excellent history at Bisley having won the Ashburton Shield in 1946 & 1956, however, after an absence of 25 years it was a highly promising return. The team also won the Tom Anstey Salver by beating Clifton College, a match resurrected after many years of abeyance.

All five Oxbridge hopefuls were successful in securing their places at their respective colleges. Matt Cole will read Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, Louise Youngman (Head Girl) Law at Christchurch, Oxford, Alice Wooley Medicine at Balliol, Oxford, and Seb Zubov Mathematics and Computer Science at Keble College, Oxford. Harriet Rix (not pictured) also secured her place to read Biochemistry at St Edmund’s Hall, Oxford.

The 8th South West Schools One Day Event took place at Cuckoo’s Nest in perfect conditions. The Novice class which consisted of 19 teams was won by The Kings School Ottery, Blundell’s were 2nd and The Maynard School were 3rd. The Blundell’s team was Saskia Simonson, Freddie Evans, Hattie Middleton-Frith and Rupert Batting. This was a hotly contested competition where less than 4 marks separated the top three teams. Rupert and Saskia were 2nd in their section and Hattie was 6th=.
The Open class was out of 8 teams and the Blundell’s team of Rupert Batting, Lottie Simonson, Maddie Simonson and Alexa Batting were 1st winning the Dixon Cup for the 3rd time. They beat Millfield Black team into 2nd place by over 50 points and Plymouth College was 3rd. These were the only teams to complete all three disciplines of the event. Rupert was 1st in his section, Alexa was 2nd and received the rosette for Best Dressage and Maddie and Lottie were both 5th.