On Monday 6 April Homebush Boys HS resumed the much anticipated contest against Birrong Girls HS in Battle of the Brains (BOTB), which was entering its third year. Mr. Elaro, Head Teacher English, coordinated the day and wrote the following brief article.

The initiative is the brain-child of Ms Dwyer, with the aim of increasing student participation in the Premier’s Reading Challenge (PRC).The event involves 30 years 7, 8 and 9 students from Homebush and 30 students from Birrong. The contestants face each other in a literature combat to ascertain the best read school in the SWS region!

The competition is split into 2 groups – 15 students from each school compete in library at Birrong Girls and the remainder battles it out at Homebush Boys’ library. Each school creates six rounds of 10 questions that focus on famous book covers, memorable lines from novels and general knowledge about novels on the PRC list.

This report was written by Ms Gyan Sahay Public Speaking Coordinator.

The 5th Annual John Symond All Boys Public Speaking Competition was held in School Hall on Thursday 2nd April. This event created a lot of hype for the 22 contestants and hundreds of students who were lucky enough to have English in the morning and their teachers were willing to bring them to witness this major Annual event.

Principal Dr. Ian Paterson and Public Speaking Coordinator Ms. Gyan Sahay with Prize Winners

Once again the Adjudicator was very impressed with the quality and the different angles the contestants took towards interpreting the topics. This, in fact become one of the discriminators which helped determine the outcome. Congratulations to the following students who won both cash prizes and a trophy. Special thanks to Sam Hayward & Patrick Gallagher for sharing the role of Chairperson and Erkan Atun for being the timekeeper.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mr John Symond for his generous sponsorship which helped pay for the gourmet pizza, the cash prizes and the Adjudicator’s fees. Thanks to Mr Hilliard for dipping into the Excellence Funds which covered for the payment of the trophies.

Homebush Boys High's 64th Annual Swimming Carnival was held on Friday 27th February at the Sydney Olympic Park Swimming Centre. As usual the fight for Champion House was extremely competitive.

Alex Patrulescu 17 years Champion	David Wang 16 Years Champion	Nick Taylor 15 Years Champion
Peter Totidis 14 Years Champion	Serge Houhlias 13 Years Champion	Joshua Rogers 12 Years Champion

Alex Patrulescu who represented Australia earlier this year broke his own school record in the 17+ Years 100m freestyle.