photos by ‘Joseph Dlhopolsky‘, ‘Ann Zulkosky’, ‘Gina Gartin‘
The 2006 Bay Scallop Bowl occurs on Saturday, 04 March 2006, at the Charles B. Wang Asian-American Center on the Stony Brook campus. Sixteen teams of high school students will participate, representing high schools from across New York State. Monetary prizes are awarded to the top three finishing teams. The winning team will travel in April 2006 to Monterey, California to compete in the 2006 NOSB finals.
Stony Brook University President Shirley Strum Kenny, Assemblyman Steve Englebrighl, and State Senator John Flanagan joined with MSRC Dean and Director David Conover to welcome 16 high school teams from across New York State to the 5th annual Bay Scallop Bowl. Also on hand was Linda Armyn Vice President of Business Development for Bethpage Federa1 Credit Union, a mjjor sponoar of this year’s event. Hosted by MSRC, the Bay Sca1lop Bowl is, one of 25 regiona1 competitions held nationwide designed to test students’ knowledge of the ocean sciences. This, year’s competition was more ation-packed than ever with the excitement culminating in the fina1 rounds. In the semifinals Stony Brook School took on the Bronx High School of Science – Bowl champions in 2004. The round came down to the fina1 question when the Stony Brook team buzzed in before the multiple choice answer options were read – and then blindly guessed the correct answer, winning the semifinals by one point.
As the championship rounds moved into the early evening hours, two teams remained to vie for this year’s title. Stony Brook School has competed in the Bowl every year since its inception and this year’s, team of 11th and 12th graders logged their strongest performance to date. Jericho High School, on the other hand, was a newcomer to the competition and went into the double elimination fina1s undefeated.
In the first of the fina1 rounds, Jericho fell to Stony Brook 43 to 65. Stony Brook continued to come on strong in the decisive 12th round and quickly took a commanding lead over Jericho. In the fina1 buzzer round, however, Jericho High School shut down Stony Brook’s momentum and came back for the win. The Jericho team celebrated in a rush of hugging and jumping up and down while the erowd of over 100 people applauded both teams’ excellent performance and the new Bay Scallop Bowl champions – Jericho High School.
Christopher Hopnner, coach of the Jericho team, commented that preparing their first Bowl team was “not thot hard when you have rea1ly great students.” Hoppner advises a class designed to get the students involved in scientific research. He credits one of his students, Harris Moore, in coming up with the idea to form a team for this year’s competition. Moore, an 11th grader and the team captain, said he was motivated by his interest in marine biology. The team will travel to Ca1ifornia in May to compete against 24 other teams from around the nation in the Nationa1 Ocean Sciences Bowl.
MSRC Dean Conover concluded, “This was one of the most fiercely contested competitions ever. The teams were extremely well coached and determined to win. I am stunned by the knowledge of oceanography the teams displayed and it’s great to see high school students delve so deeply into science. They are the future marine scientists of the world. When they chose a college, I hope they all decide to attend Stony Brook.”
