The van dropped us off at Hunter College High School, a formidable, fortress-like structure that barely resembled its eponymous college. We headed upstairs and then entered the waiting room. There were already a few schools there, talking with one another as their voices became a loud blend of noises. Many of them were making some final preparations. Students were strategizing and conversing with their coaches while others were studying, reviewing notes, or quizzing each other. My team and I found some seats and we also got to work…by playing cards.
After a while, the moderators showed up, welcomed us and went over the rules. There was even a guest speaker, a Columbia University graduate working at a nuclear reactor, who gave a short keynote presentation about his experiences as a Science Bowl competitor.
Then the games began.
The regional competition was divided into several sections. First, the preliminary rounds, where every school competes in a slightly round-robin format. After three rounds, the “prelims” end, and the top sixteen schools with the most points accumulated move up to the elimination rounds. This time, a single elimination system was implemented (where every team has one “life”), and the remaining schools are left to battle it out until one team remains.
So how did our school perform? I’ll get to that.
All nineteen teams went upstairs to their assigned rooms. The rooms were ordinary classrooms, obviously, but towards the front were two sets of four desks adorned with buzzers, with bright red buttons, all connected by wires. The wires trailed from each desk and all congregated at the moderator’s desk in front of the classroom.
By the time we entered our assigned classroom, things were getting a little nerve-wracking. After learning that our first opponent was Stuyvesant High School–practically the “Harvard” of New York State public high schools–we all knew how this was going to end. Stuyvesant, a large school with over 3,000 students, is famous for its rigorous academics and its low acceptance rate, which is below 5%.
The first round ended, Stuyvesant with 142 points and us with a whopping 8 points. To be honest, I was surprised we managed to win any points (that was all thanks to Seth).
In the second round, we went against Vestal Senior High School and lost. However, the score was 136-78, a significant improvement compared to the last round. For the third round, we went against Hunter College High School’s second team, and we actually beat them! (108-64) It also might be worth mentioning that Hunter College High’s student body is nearly twice our size and, like Stuyvesant, it is a selective admission public school with only a 7% acceptance rate and some of the highest average SAT and ACT scores of any school in the country.
To our surprise, we qualified for the elimination rounds. There was a lunch break between the preliminary rounds and the elimination rounds (we had Domino’s Pizza).
The lunch break ended, and we headed back to the game rooms. Our confidence was restored and our hopes were high. Clearly, we were ready to take on our next opponent. The first opponent was James Madison High School, which we beat 72-22.
We went to the next room and became reacquainted with our second opponent: Stuyvesant.
You can probably guess how this one ended, but we did better! At the very least, we improved our score differential from round one (the score was 94-48, Stuyvesant obviously winning).
In the end, we were eliminated at the quarter finals, which was a great finish for a small school like Haldane. We waited for the rest of the competition to end, and we took part in a short closing ceremony. The team that came in first was Hunter College High School’s first team, Stuyvesant finished second, and the second team of Hunter College High School–the team we beat in round 3–finished third.
Overall, we did far better than any of us expected: we beat two teams, we made it to the quarter-finals, beating higher ranked schools in the process (mostly thanks to Seth).
