Two students from St Columba’s Comprehensive, Glenties, excelled at the recent finals of the All-Ireland Linguistics Olympiad (AILO).
Siún Ibbsand and Maria McLoone (pictured) both medalled at the competition run by the ADAPT Centre and supported by Science Foundation Ireland.
The AILO contest challenges students to engage in ‘code-breaking’ by applying logic, patience, and reasoning skills to solve complex puzzles in unfamiliar languages. It is a key element of the nationwide problem-solving initiative.
Maria and Siún were the only students to represent County Donegal from among one hundred qualifiers from over forty schools nationwide.
The Glenties girls participated in the gruelling individual event in the morning, testing their problem-solving skills over two and a half hours against the world’s toughest puzzles in logic, language,and linguistics. In the afternoon, they joined with students from other schools and participated in the two-hour team competition.
The results are now in, and the students from Glenties have done themselves and St. Columba’s Comprehensive proud.
Maria will be awarded a gold medal for coming fourth in the Junior individual competition – and thirteenth overall – a fantastic achievement in her first AILO National Final.
This was Siún’s second trip to the AILO final, having also qualified last year. This year she improved her ranking in the individual round, with a top fifty finish and her team finished fifth out of twenty-six teams in the team competition.
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