Margaret Mary Senior High School has qualified for the quarterfinals of the National Science and Maths Quiz after beating seeded Takoradi Senior High and Labone Senior High.

The contest didn’t produce many points, with the victors carrying the day with 26 points, much lower point tally considering Konogo Odumase SHS lost to West Africa Senior High School despite having 55 points.

Takoradi SHS began their 2018 campaign as a seeded school after getting to the quarter-final in 2017 defeating Benkum SHS Oguaa SHTS.

Judging by the strength of their opposition last year, Takoradi SHS were not clearly defined as favourites to win this one-eigth tie.

Labone SHS and Margaret Mary SHS both qualified from the prelims with 28 points so not much was expected of this contest save the fact that the seeded school is likely to be eliminated, which happened.

Labone took an early lead in the contest with 14 points and Margaret Mary followed with 12 and Takoradi trailed with 11 points.

The speed race changed the fate of Labone forever after a series of wrong answers saw their points plummet drastically to 9. Margaret Mary filled the void and lead with 13 points and Takoradi followed them with 10 points.

A lot of problems followed the Problem of the Day with Labone scoring only 1 point out of 10 and even that was on ‘humanitarian’ grounds. Margaret Mary scored 3 and Takoradi salvaged half of the points.

The True or False round didn’t change the position of the schools as Margaret Mary still led and Takoradi trailed with Labone behind both schools.

The final round which had 4 riddles worth a maximum 20 points was to determine the winner but after the first three went either wrongly answered or unanswered the winner was certain to be Margaret Mary SHS.

They 6 point difference between them and Takoradi SHS meant even if they [Takoradi] answer the last riddle on the first clue and get the maximum 5 points, they will be 1 point short of pushing the contest into a tie-breaker.