Participating Students:

Dan Cohen

Mike Hathaway

Eric Jonsson

Ryan Fagan

Rory McHenry

Nate Trojian

Joshua Slocum

Sayan Basu

Paul Collisson

Jordan Butler

Almeena Shaileh

These students have put in many hours since September in preparing for the 2009 Southern New England Middle School Science Bowl regional which was held Saturday, March 28th at the University of Connecticut.  This all day event, from 7:30AM – 5:30PM, is one of 38 science bowl regionals in the country that feed into the National Science Bowl, the nations premiere middle school science competition which is hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy.   Of the 38 regionals, the UConn regional is considered one of the toughest in the nation, and last year’s UConn winner, Jonas Clarke of Lexington Mass., went on to finish 4^th in the nation for 2008.

That exact same Jonas Clarke team was again present at UConn, and expected by all participants to be a lock for returning to the nationals again.  All Jonas Clarke team members were 7^th graders last year, and there was talk that this year, being all 8^th graders, they would not only easily clean up at UConn but would now vie for top middle school in the nation honors when the nationals are held in Washington, D.C. in a few months. 

Two Rivers did not face these students last year, as we were bumped out of the academic finals before facing them.  They had pretty much destroyed every team they did face, by over 100 points each, a significant set of blowouts.  Though we never directly competed against them in academics last year, we did tie them for total points as we had won the hydrogen fuel cell car race.  Unfortunately for us, in case of a tie for first it was the team with the highest academic score that went to the nationals held in Colorado last year.

This Saturday though, we were undefeated when we met them in the semi-finals.  They also were undefeated.  We had already won first place in the hydrogen fuel cell car race, a new record for the Southern New England regional as this is the third year in a row that we have won the event.  (Most of the credit goes to Ryan Fagan for these three years of success, along with students Sayan Basu and  Eric Jonsson, as well as the assistance afforded by Ryan’s dad and Eric’s dad through their sharing of tools and advice).  But this year the fuel cell car race was no longer going to be added into the academic score and only the academic winner would advance to the nationals.  To the credit of our A-team students, we beat Jonas Clarke by almost 60 points.  This was a stunning upset for everyone involved and generated a tremendous buzz.  Being double elimination,  Jonas Clarke then went on to face the team emerging out of the losers bracket, handled them very easily, and then came back to face us again.  We fought hard to give them their second loss and thus earn our trip to the nationals, but did not prevail – setting up a third and final match, being winner take all this time.  We again fought hard and made it close, but again did not prevail.  Nonetheless the Two Rivers students had won the hearts of the majority of the audience attending, and during the closing awards ceremony, they received the loudest applause when they came forward to receive their first place hydrogen fuel cell car race trophy, and then their second place academic trophy.  In addition, for the 12 teams that did not qualify for the playoff rounds, our second tier team, Two Rivers B, won first in the wildcard division. 

All said, we came very close to sweeping top honors in all three events, but again just missed out on being the representative going to the nationals for a third year in a row.  Yet we did again show that Two Rivers has exceptional students, and thus exceptional teachers - and by besting Smith Middle School of Glastonbury and other schools like Newtown Middle, CT., Boston College High School, Boston, MA., John Winthrop Middle, Deep River, CT., and Mansfield Middle School in CT.; have proven that Two Rivers retains its reputation as an excellent choice for students with strong science interests.

P.S.