SAGE

Tournament of Minds

The Tournament of Minds (TOM) is a tournament when we face challenges we are given and on the day, we present our solution. There are two parts, the Long-Term, which is the one where we present our solution on the day, and the Spontaneous Challenge, which is where the judges give us a challenge to solve in a period of time. It changes every year. I enjoyed the Spontaneous Challenge in the TOM because the challenge was interesting and surprising, as the problem I was asked and to solve was not what I expected. As for the Long-Term, my team was doing the STEAM challenge, which was that we had to make a model that shows all the four spheres, the hydrosphere, lithosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere. Although we didn't spend much time on creating our presentation, which we thought of using some magnetic tiles and balloons on the day. Even if our teammates were away, we always found a solution to anything that was in our way.
Xavier Luu

On the 16th August, two St Aloysius teams competed in the Tournament of Minds at Deakin University. This is a problem solving and critical thinking competition, consisting of schools from around the nation and even around the world. The tournament gave us the opportunity to extend our learning through given challenges. I was in the STEM team, where we were given a Spontaneous Challenge on the spot and four weeks to work on a Long-Term challenge. In the Long-Term Challenge, we were given a scenario where the four spheres of the Earth were no longer working together. We were required to create a 3D emblem of the Earth, as well as form a scientific theory on the cause of the breakdown and how to bring them back together in a stronger configuration. My team ended up proposing the idea of humans causing the breakdown, and balance being the solution to it. The emblem was further made out of magnets and balloons.
On the day, it was initially daunting. We had many last-minute changes to our team and our emblem. However, both challenges went pretty smoothly, and we managed to get a lot out of the tournament in general. I enjoyed collaborating with people across different year levels because it allowed me to build stronger friendships. The tournament also helped me apply my knowledge into complex real-world problems and deepen my understanding of the environment around me. Ultimately, it was a challenging yet fun experience that I am lucky to have been given the opportunity to compete in.
Holly Trang

On Saturday, the SAGE group travelled to Deakin University Burwood to participate in the Tournament of Minds challenge which is an academic competition focusing on both collaborative problem solving and critical thinking. We were split up into two groups: STEAM and language literature. As a language literature team, we were first put into the Spontaneous Challenge where we had four minutes to plan our answer and one minute to present to an unknown scenario. It was very challenging to think of an answer in little amount of time, but I think we came up with a very interesting answer in the end. After a break, we then went on to the Long-Term Challenge which we had been practicing for quite a few weeks. We had to take a Shaun Tan book (in our case, Cicada) and bring it to life by showing the journey of the main character and its struggles. We were put in a lecture room with three judges and had ten minutes to perform. Our presentation was very enjoyable to do and overall, TOM was great experience for me and my team.
Emily Bishara

On Saturday, the 16th August, many members of SAGE (including me) met at Deakin University at 7:30 in the morning for the Tournament of Minds (TOM). TOM is split up into several categories: The Arts, STEM, Language Literature, and Social Sciences. St Aloysius entered two teams into TOM. These were Language Literature, and STEM.

This was my second year participating in TOM, and this year I was in the STEM team. We had six weeks (starting on the winter school holidays) to work as a team to complete a STEM-related challenge. The challenge was called Re-Union:

Everything on Earth can be classified in one of four systems: The lithosphere (land), atmosphere (air), hydrosphere (water), or biosphere (living things). For millennia, the Earth’s four spheres worked in perfect harmony, sustaining life on the planet. Their balance could be represented by a magnificent emblem, a symbol of their unity and interdependence. 
But something has gone wrong. The four spheres are no longer working together, and the world is beginning to suffer the consequences. The emblem representing the spheres has come apart. 
From the 2025 Tournament of Minds STEM Challenge Pack

Our first ideas were rocky. We needed a physical emblem, a video, a script, and to convince our team to keep working on the challenge. I was away for the first four weeks of the challenge while I was on vacation in Mauritius. We started by creating an online group chat to get through the work. First, we thought the emblem could be custom-made by us, having the Earth fall apart and re-arranged in a stronger configuration. As some of our group members were away, we could not receive the physical work and were limited until the last minute.

The week before the event, my team got together to finalise our plans. On the day, we were met with a spontaneous challenge. We had never heard it before and were not allowed to tell anyone. We worked as a team to pull apart the issue and find what may be causing it.

We were all nervous walking into our long-term challenge, but the judges were all friendly. We read our script to them, showed them our emblem, and played our video. It may not have been the best TOM project, but it went alright.
Gregory Jenkins