By Kimberly Tan
Feb. 18, 2007

It was a close shave, but in the end Temasek Hall pipped perennial rivals and defending champions, Eusoff Hall to regain the overall championship title at this year’s Inter-Hall Games.

TH was also crowned overall girls’ champion, while EH nabbed the overall guys’ title as consolation.

Tied in first place with 119 points apiece, TH edged EH on a gold medal count back. TH had won 12 titles, compared to EH’s 7.

“It’s a great achievement for us. We lost all three titles last year, and this year, we brought two back. So, hopefully next year, we can get all three titles back,” said Ashley Li, TH sports director.

The IHG was held over the last one and a half months and came to a close Feb.15 with the road relay competition and closing ceremony held at the Sports and Recreation Centre. Teams from the six halls of residences in NUS competed in various sports.

Master of Temasek Hall, Associate Professor Francis Tay said that TH’s win was a “hard fought battle.”

“The title was determined only in the last race,” Tay said, referring to the road relay event. “We have to at least come in second to have any shot at it,”

“At one stage in the race, we were in fourth place for the guys, and then the last runner managed to catch up to second place,” he said.

EH Sports Secretary Benjamin Ng expressed his disappointment at losing the two titles.

“It sucks, I guess. We have a lot of freshmen this year, for the girls, its kind of a good lesson for them to learn,” he said.

He added that losing to Temasek Hall based only on gold medals was “a lesson learnt.”

“We have to learn not to lose so many finals now,” said Ng.

At the closing ceremony, SRC head of staff, Seetoh Cheng Fave, kicked off proceedings with a speech, saying that this year’s IHG was “very successful despite having not enough facilities to work with.”

He explained that the facilities had not been “upgraded for 20 years” and the participants in next year’s IHG could look forward to “brand-new facilities to work with” after current renovations are completed.

He added that the IHG played a great part in bonding residents and creating buzz, as well as to help to “identify some talents out there” who could possibly participate at the varsity level.

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