Social Studies Super Bowl XVII: A Truly Historic Moment
by Eric Tull
Last year: Full attendance at York Prep School
This year: Only 51% attendance in the building
Last year: Attendance at York Prep’s annual Social Studies Super Bowl: 300
This year: Over 450
How is this possible? In February of each year, the York Prep Pantherdome hosts the Annual York Prep Social Studies Super Bowl, where the four Upper School classes compete to answer questions about history and geography. This year, however, as with everything in the age of COVID, things were slightly different. Safety precautions made it impractical to bring a crowd of spectators into the gym, so we decided to bring the Super Bowl to them instead. The combined wizardry of Tech Director Richard Abba and History teachers Lane Choplin and Charles Kaczynski enabled us to livestream the contest not only throughout the school building but also into the home of every remote student in the tri-state area and beyond. An additional advantage: the Middle School students could watch the show from their classrooms [and were reported to be enthusiastically shouting out answers], which has never been possible before.
The essentials of the Super Bowl remained the same as in “normal times”. The questions, in twelve categories, were written as always by now-retired History teacher Mr. Michael Roper. The History Department, chaired by Ms. Christina Cox, provided the creativity that brought the production to life, and the officiating was covered by ever-reliable Physical Education coaches Paul Curran and Colin Horn.
In York Super Bowl history, this epic battle has been won by senior, junior, sophomore, and even freshmen classes. This year, the event was held on Monday, February 8, and the two challenge rounds were palpably suspenseful. First, the sophomores barely surpassed the freshmen, 34 -32. Then, the seniors squeaked past the juniors, 44 – 42, before coming on strong against the 10th grade in the championship round with a score of 32 - 14.
Winners, as always, were presented with bestselling books on a variety of history-related topics, and they also earned bragging rights for an entire calendar year. If necessity is the mother of invention, social distancing was the mother of a wider audience for this literally historic event, and with all the lemons thrown at us by the pandemic, York’s History Department served up a Bowl full of lemonade.
