Richard Levi

School is busy at the moment.  The Cricket Superskills afternoon, preparations for the House Plays, Music at the Manor Concert and the demands of end-of-term projects and tests are keeping pupils and teachers more active than ever.

'Levi-Tation' - Frans Esterhuyse in Beeld, 21 February 2012

Then last Sunday the news hit us of the extraordinary world record breaking feats of Richard Levi, captain of our lst X1 in 2005.  Four TV channels descended on the school during the week, radio stations were requesting interviews, sports reporters wanted inside information of the formative years of this new superstar. The Beeld cartoon had us all chuckling on Tuesday morning about the new star being born.  I said to one reporter that I hope that one day when a Wynberg Old Boy discovers a cure for cancer, that he will receive as much acclaim as this 24 year old prodigy did for hitting a cricket ball so spectacularly.

‘Wynberg Boys’ High is to cricket what Grey College is to rugby’ gushed one internet site.  Fortunately our coaches have their feet too firmly rooted in the ground to fall for that one.  The moment sportsmen think that they are the best, then there is only one route to go….. down.   Bruce Probyn, my predecessor, used to tell the boys that they should look on themselves as the second best school - so that they never cease to aim to be the best.

Virtually every reporter asked whether we were aware of Richard’s talent at school.  Well, Kronendal  Primary School certainly did because their coach, Chris Ridley of the Blue Leopards Cricket Academy, recommended that he come and play for our u14 team when he was still in Grade 7.  The schools whom we met in combat on the cricket field certainly were aware -  as there are ten Levi Century Trees around the Jacques Kallis Oval which bear testimony to that.   SA Cricket certainly were aware as they awarded him SA u19 Cricketer of the Year in 2005.  He was in illustrious company in that he followed on from the 2004 winner – AB de Villiers.

KCR, Jacques Kallis & Richard Levi
Mutual and Federal Cricket Awards Ceremony 2005

I accompanied Richard’s dad, Jonathan, up to Johannesburg for the Mutual and Federal  Cricket Awards Ceremony in 2005 to support Richard at this prestigious event.  There was a double celebration in that we watched with pride as Jacques Kallis went on stage to receive the ‘Supersport Fans’  Cricketer of the Year Award.  Master of Ceremonies, Vince van der Bijl said of Jacques: ‘He is the rock on which South African Cricket leans. The glue which binds the team.  He is the fire which ignites their passion’.

Jacques is certainly not ready to pass on his mantle yet – but Richard is waiting in the wings to etch his name,  in time,  into the history books of South African cricket.

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Social psychologists talk about members of groups (Schools?  Sports teams?)  ‘catching’ behaviour from one another.  Groups of people change their behaviour according to the norms of the environment  in which they operate.  In 1855, the future Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, John X Merriman, then a pupil at Bishops,  wrote to a friend : ‘We challenged McNortons School (WBHS)… but our ground was too bad…. and the match was not played.  They would have beaten us hollow… they were very good players.’  (Reported in a ‘Century of Bishops’ by Colin McIntyre pg 15).

This legacy of Wynberg cricket, continued under Headmaster Edward Littlewood when names of Wynberg Old Boys started appearing in South African Cricket team sheets,  was strengthened under Bill Bowden and subsequent Headmasters.  Now a century later,  Jacques Kallis and  Richard Levi persist in intensifying  this culture.

Cricket is an integral part of the Wynberg Brand which values Commitment (‘Aiming High’), Pride and a dogged determination Never to Give Up.  Our u15 team defended a small total on Saturday against Affies (the Pretoria school which produced AB de Villiers, Faf de Plessis and Jacques Rudolph)  and won by one run. Have they, too,  now ‘caught’ this cricket culture?

As Archie Henderson said in The Times on Monday morning:  ‘There is a culture at Wynberg of playing good and positive cricket.’  May cricket reporters continue to say this for the next century of cricket at this school.

KCR

The Grade 8 Guide to our Galaxy

Professional tour guides could have learnt a few tips from our Grade 8 Guides on our recent Open Days.  They proved, yet again, that passion creates energy – and certainly passion and energy was very evident in the corridors of Wynberg when close on four hundred families were egged on round the sights and sounds of South Africa’s second oldest school.

'Welcome to Big School, let me show you around ..'

Nicholas Moss introduces himself to Josh Edwards from Sweet Valley

Grade 8’s are very deliberately chosen to be our Guides for the important job of showing potential pupils around the school.  They exude a combination of enthusiasm, naivete and innocence as, resplendent in their newly acquired blazers, they show off their new school. Full credit to their matric buddies who had ensured earlier in the week that their charges had a working knowledge of the geography of their campus. For a full week, breaks were taken up with matrics intently walking their buddies around the school.

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Of course, there is an air of unpredictability about what these young men espouse as gospel truth.  The manager of the Old Boys’ Clubhouse in the Bill Bowden Pavilion, Glenda Martindale, was still chuckling hours after the tours had passed through when she heard one Guide earnestly state with the confidence of one WHO KNOWS that ‘this is where the teachers come to drink at breaks’.  (‘Not true, My Lord, although some teachers might wish to have a stress reliever after a double period of Grade 10 Maths….)

I still recall one Guide a few years back who, while showing his group around the matric quad, duly informed them that ‘this is where the matrics go and smoke’.    (I will take the 5^th Amendment on that one, My Lord).

Some groups had the privilege of being shown the school toilets; some went on an orienteering course to the Oude Wijnberg Vineyard (with an anxious mother in heels…); another group was dragged across the suburb of Wynberg by an enthusiastic hockey player to see  our Astroturf hockey field.  A number of groups were fortunate to watch a lst Xl match on the Jacques Kallis Oval where they saw one of the school’s star batsman, David Bedingham, smash the bowlers of Marlborough College (UK) for 95 runs in 27 balls. 

Neil Eddy, sitting in his office, was amused to hear one Guide explain the concept of the mirror in the A Corridor:  ‘This is where you must check your appearance.  You had better tuck your shirt in before Mr Richardson sees you….’

A tour round a school must reveal more than mere buildings, artefacts and facilities. One year, a bemused family was informed that ‘this is the Alf Morris Building.  Do you know that one of our teachers was named after this building?’

The tours are about people.  Young Wynberg Men showing other Wynberg Men in action in the classrooms, on the sports field, on the stage, in the music rooms.

The tours were more than that.  Most importantly they were about giving our newly-blazered freshmen the confidence of speaking in front of strangers.  The confidence of bragging about their school and its 171-year-old brand and traditions.  The confidence of knowing that they belonged.

I was delighted with our 13 year-old Guides.  They did us proud.

"Sorry seems to be the hardest word .."

The Sorry Trophy

Sorry!

Few teachers who have taught for any length of time on the Wynberg staff cannot boast that at some time they were not worthy recipients of the infamous Sorry Trophy.  New  teachers, however,  are normally given a period of grace before being subjected to the vicious humour which characterizes the staffroom of a boys’ school.

Thus it was somewhat unusual early this year,  that a teacher new to the ways of WBHS, found himself the bemused recipient of this not-sought-after trophy.  After his first week  of teaching at WYNBERG BOYS’ HIGH, English teacher Neil Veitch took it upon himself to thank the teaching staff for making himself feel so welcome at SACS – a school where he had been teaching for the last twelve years.  Greeted by hoots of derisive laughter, he was presented with the Sorry Trophy before he could even sit down - so ensuring that 2012 in the Wynberg Staffroom would start off in the time-honoured fashion.

The Sorry Trophy was first presented in the 1980’s to the teacher who made the biggest faux paux of the term.  The figure on the trophy is hiding its head in embarrassment under its arm.  A member of staff, ‘the Sorry Master’,  is elected whose job it is to nominate the eventual ‘winner’ from a long list of not-so-willing applicants.  It is not expected of him, though,  to observe the entire truth to the full letter of the law.   His decision is always final and no defence or debate is permitted by the recipient - but a gracious remorseful  acceptance speech usually goes down well.

Most teachers of the time will remember an early award back in the 1980’s to a teacher  - who has since taken early retirement -  who had marked the exam paper of a ghost pupil called ‘Snowball’. The teacher was unaware of the fact that a bored invigilator, Larry Moser, had written out the answers while walking around the class and slipped Snowball’s ‘answer sheet’ into the pile of papers to be marked.  The teacher marked the paper, entered the marks on a mark sheet and even wrote a report comment on Snowball!  A worthy early winner!

Since then winners have accepted the trophy who have mixed up parents at a PTA and reported at length on the wrong boy; phoned home to a parent asking where their son was when he had left school three months before; or selected a player who plays rugby into a hockey team.

Wynberg Welcomes Neil Veitch

A particular favourite story of mine is about Rodney Inglis, a poacher turned gamekeeper:  a recipient himself of innumerable Sorry Awards over the years, he is now the incumbent Sorry Master.  His Oscar Winning Sorry was when, some years back, he kept the entire Grade 11 Camp waiting for supplies at the Mizpah Camp site after he had gone through to Grabouw to replenish stocks.  Although he had been told the access number to the gate on the national road, by the time he returned from the village, the number had slipped his mind.  Cell phones were not yet in common usage, so he had to drive back to the village to phone the camp to be reminded of the number.  Who would think that 1-2-3-4 would be such a difficult number for a degreed pedagogue to remember?

As Sorry Master, he took pleasure in exacting  revenge though.  After I had taken the first assembly of the year in January 2011 and had spent some time in expounding to the boys the virtues of commitment and diligence in their academic work in the year ahead,  I ended my talk by wishing the school a ‘Happy Holiday’.  The award was handed to me by a grinning Rodney Inglis as I re-entered the staff room from the assembly…

Thank you, Neil Veitch, for ensuring that the high standards of the Sorry Award are not declining in 2012!