Over and under

WWII sea battle waged by SCIL teams in year’s next-to-last mind melee

By RICHARD A. ROSS

GRAHAMSVILLE, NY — The timeframe was World War II and members of the Sullivan County Interacademic League (SCIL) found themselves engaged in a battle waged from the sea surface and below. The April 24 series of tasks required intensive thinking, teamwork and strategy to either sink the destroyers on the surface or destroy the enemy submarines that lurk below.

It’s yet another brilliant mind milieu orchestrated by Tri-Valley teachers Brian Tingley and Ron Hughes as the larger battle for the coveted Sullivan Cup enters its fifth and next-to-last skirmish of the 2007-08 school year.

Tingley divided the students into two groups: surface or below, and the teams went to work using their knowledge of history, math, science and literature to earn ships, torpedoes, depth charges and the necessary data needed to complete their missions.

Some of the tasks: On the submarine side; solve a cryptoquip to find the direction of the enemy convoy, answer questions to earn bases for subs and torpedoes, solve a sudoku which gives the speed of the sub. Use that information to plan attack points of the convoy, use sonar to detect a lone ship using the periscope. (Eight teams shot at the destroyer, but only Tri-Valley figured out the proper angles to sink it—but failed to notice the American flag on the ship and mistakenly sank one of its own!)

On the surface ship side, the idea was to escort a convoy to safety. Students answered Regents-style questions to earn convoy ship and depth charges. They read a weather station symbol and plotted it to their maps and measured three potential routes to decide which to take. Students were given a Roman cipher to decode, which told them that the sub is waiting to ambush them.

If they decoded the message, they had to use triangulation to determine where the message was coming from. Those who didn’t decode it lost a ship. Once they encountered enemy subs, they dropped depth charges, using the time it took for the sonar ping to be sent and return to the ship. This was needed to figure out the distance underwater and the detonation time.

When the smoke of the battle cleared, the day’s victor was Tri-Valley, with the bounty of 200 points; Liberty was second with 198; Monticello third with 194; Sullivan West fourth with 174; and there was a tie between Fallsburg and Livingston Manor for fifth with 172.

Results to date: 1) Liberty 931; 2) Monticello 923; 3) Sullivan West 907; 4) Tri-Valley 906, 5) Roscoe 870.

Sullivan West is the defending Sullivan Cup champion.

The final SCIL meet will be held on May 14 at Hanofee Park in Liberty. Subsequently, a combined Sullivan County SCIL group will travel to Oswego for the fourth Sullivan-Oswego challenge.

Visit riverreporter.com for an album of pictures from SCIL.