SANDY CREEK, NY – This year’s Battle of the Books is one Sandy Creek Central School students will not be forgetting anytime soon as a completely digital battle saw dozens of students compete in the annual competition.
With the pandemic making the usual in-person battles impossible, a coordinated effort among the teachers and staff who run the event made it possible for the literary event, held the evenings of May 26 and 27.
Around 45 students in grades three through 12 participated this year, with some starting books last summer to begin studying, said Sandy Creek Librarian Mrs. Rachel Allen who coordinates the event districtwide.
“This season of Battle of the Books will be, by far, our most memorable and probably my most proud,”Allen said. “We had a situation handed to us that we were not expecting, but persevered and went digital.”
All students read and studied 10 books for months for the quiz-show style battle in which they are challenged as a team to recall information about a specific book and identify it.
This year, teams were all on a video conference streamed live for the public to watch and discussed answers with their teammates via a shared document.
Winners of the Grades 3/4 competition were Kaityn Perkins, Peyton Clark and Jesper Wart. The Grade 5 battle was won by Abby Jones and Bella Hoffman.
At the Middle School level after a staggering four tiebreaker questions, the team of Madden Soluri, Brody Pecha, Jacoby Balcom and Lola Tessier emerged victorious.
The High School level was won by Elsa Graf, Deanna Hathway and Niko Rosenbaum.
All of the winning students moved on to compete against some of their teachers in a special Students vs. Staff battle on May 28.
Allen thanked fellow Comet staff members Brandie Norton, Kristen Dingman, Cynthia Rudd for their support with the program and Chas Worden for all his assistance with streaming the event.
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