Mt. Sinai High School continued its dominance of the Bay Scallop Bowl with an impressive victory in the 2013 competition, held recently at Stony Brook University’s Student Activities Center.
Mount Sinai High School Team (left to right): Julia Eberhard, Patrick McKeown, Ethan Donowitz, Camille Jwo, team captain Nicholas O’Mara, coach David Chase.
The SoMAS-run Bay Scallop Bowl, an annual regional competition in the National Ocean Sciences Bowl (NOSB), is one of the School’s principal public outreach and education activities. The 2013 competition was the 12th in the series, all of which had taken place in February or early March. For the first 11 events, the weather had generally been good. However, as the date for the 2013 Bay Scallop Bowl, Saturday 09 February 2013, approached, forecasters issued a series of increasingly bleak projections, calling for a significant snowfall for Long Island that Friday night. At noon on Thursday, the event was postponed a week, to Saturday 16 February 2013. This proved to be a good call. On Friday night, the Stony Brook Campus was inundated with nearly 30 inches of snow.
The 16th of February dawned cloudy with a chance of scattered snow showers; not great but better than a blizzard. Of the 16 teams scheduled for the bowl, all but one were able to compete on the 16th. The missing team was made good by creating a second team (“B” team) from one of the three schools that had brought enough additional students to the bowl. By random selection, that school proved to be Mt. Sinai High School. The week’s postponement caused some problems with the availability of volunteers necessary to officiate at the Bay Scallop Bowl. Nevertheless, in typical Bay Scallop Bowl fashion, everybody pulled together to make the competition a successful and enjoyable experience for all, especially the competing students. In the final round, perennial powerhouse Mt. Sinai High School (their “A” team) faced an up-and-coming squad from Farmingdale High School. The two teams were close through the middle of the round, but then Mt. Sinai began to pull away. When the final bell rang, Mt. Sinai had won, for the 7th time in 12 competitions, a remarkable achievement. The strong team from Farmingdale High was awarded second prize. The good sportsmanship award was won by the great kids from Half Hollow Hills East High School.
The Mighty Mustangs from Mt. Sinai will now begin to prepare for the 2013 National Ocean Sciences Bowl Final Competition, to be held April 18-21 at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. The snow season in coastal Wisconsin should be just about over by then…
The Bay Scallop Bowl is administered by the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences of Stony Brook University. Those interested in learning more about the event should contact event organizers Kim Knoll (kim.knoll@stonybrook.edu) or William Wise (william.wise@stonybrook.edu).
Photos from the 2013 Bay Scallop Bowl are available on Google Photos.