On Sunday the 20th of August, William Hall, Aaron Pasztor, Vidath Ranasinghe, Isaac Mitrevski, Daniel Morozov and Sam Stevin represented the College at the South Coast regional Tournament of the Minds competition. 

There was a selection of topics to choose from to base the performance on, these included Language & Literature, Social Sciences, STEM, and the Arts. Our secondary students chose Social Sciences as our subject for the presentation. The topic was “Clash of the Ages”, and the context was that two events, one from the 20th century and the other from earlier, have merged, causing the world we live in today to be completely different (for better or worse). Our task was to explain the cause of this convergence, and its effects on the modern world as we know it. This includes science fiction elements (explaining the time merge), elements of social sciences (effects on society), and drama (performing the play). In addition, we were to select one artefact from each event and explain its significance to the time convergence and the relationship between both of the events associated with them.

Our team selected the Cold War as our 20th-century event, and the Peloponnesian War as our “distant-past” event. We chose these two events because of their similarities, both being ideological conflicts between polar opposites. The artefact from the Cold War was a Soviet pilot’s journal, and the one from the Peloponnesian War was the Antikythera Mechanism.

Within the task, we had to include a justification as to why we chose such artefacts/events, explain the cause of the time convergence, demonstrate the significance of the two events on our modernistic society, identify the common thread that linked both events together, and present the moment that both events occurred and their impact on the 21st century. 

Our plot was that a Soviet aircraft was sent back in time from another universe by the Greek God of time himself, Chronos, to scare the Spartans into surrendering to the Athenians right before the start of the Peloponnesian War. This caused Athens to win, and thus, with a new superweapon from 2000 years in advance, they expanded their ideology all over the world, which in turn caused the ideology to become more extreme. 2000 years later, in the 21st century, the world is in anarchy. 

We also had to compete in an impromptu section which further tested our collaboration and creativity. At the awards ceremony we were fortunate enough to attain Honours in the Social Science category in recognition of our efforts. In exciting news, The NSW Director of Tournament of the Minds has selected Edmund Rice College for their pick to compete at the State Finals this Sunday. Wish us luck! 

By Daniel Morozov, Isaac Mitevski, and Sam Stevin.