An exceptional group of Huntington High School students will head to Cooperstown early next week for the State History Day finals. The teenagers will vie against the best in New York after finding earlier success on the local and Long Island regional levels. The top finishers will advance to the national championships at the University of Maryland in June.
The Huntington teenagers will face the judges on Monday, April 23 at three different sites in and around the Village of Cooperstown in Upstate New York, including the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum, the Farmers’ Museum and the Otesaga Resort Hotel. The awards ceremony is slated for the Cooperstown High School auditorium.
Junior Katie Riley leads Huntington's State History Day finals delegation.
This year’s national contest theme is Conflict & Compromise in History. Huntington’s State History Day finals contestants and their categories include:
• Individual Documentary
Women’s Air Force Service Pilots (WASP): Winning Their War by Katie Riley
• Group Documentary
Diplomatic Relations on Trial: The First Spy Exchange of the Cold War by Andrew Knowles, Ryan Knowles, Paul Katigbak, Julien Rentsch
• Group Documentary
Northern Ireland Troubles by Isabella Neira, Margaret Lalor, Moira Contino
• Group Exhibit
The Flushing Remonstrance and John Bowne: 360 Years of Refusing to Compromise on Religious Freedom by Abigail Holmes, Madelyn Kye, Gabriel Medina-Jaudes
Huntington High School social studies teacher Lauren Desiderio coordinates the district’s National History Day program. Several other faculty at the middle school and high school levels participate in the initiative, mentoring and guiding students as they develop their individual and group projects in a variety of contest categories. The current school year also saw SEARCH program sixth graders participate for the first time under the guidance of teacher Jessica Risalvato.
The New York State Historical Association in Cooperstown has sponsored the program since 1980. Student projects are judged based on the following rubric: Historical quality (60 percent), clarity of presentation (20 percent) and relation to the theme (20 percent).
The delegation heading to the State History Day finals from Huntington is excited. “My documentary as well as my supportive materials have been submitted,” said Ms. Riley, a junior who took first place in the Long Island regional finals at Hofstra University. “I look forward to going to Cooperstown next week and hope that my work holds up to the competition.”
