Biggest Corporate Bowl provides close finish

by Larry Austin
Grand Island Dispatch, March 14, 2008

The biggest Corporate Bowl ever concluded Tuesday with one of its most dramatic and tightest finishes.

The Nerd Herd topped a record 38-team field to take down the $4,000 top prize, edging H2OH-NO and The Jackson 4 by 40 points, 180-145-145.

The scholastic quiz contest tested GI students in core academic areas. Corporate Bowl, in its 10th year, is presented by the Grand Island School and Business Allicance and Abraxis, Astellas Pharma Manufacturing, the Grand Island Chamber of Commerce, Invitrogen, River Oaks Golf Club & Estates and Grand Island High School.

The Nerd Herd will share $4,000 in scholarship money, or $1,000 divided between team members Julia Figliotti, Luke Burkhart, Amanda Jaeger and Alex Richter.

GISBA’s Jim Sharpe praised the partnership between the business and education system that made the event possible. He said it was the largest and best attended edition to date.

H2OH-NO and The Jackson 4 agreed to combine second and third place scholarships ($2,000 for second and $1,000 for third) and divide it equally, leaving $1,500 for both teams and divided into $375 scholarships per student.

“I thought that was kind of an adult way of looking at it,” Sharpe said of the settlement. There would have been an overtime round of questions had the teams not agreed to the chop. “It states a lot for their character,” Sharpe said of the decision.

The Jackson 4 included Jeff Szczepaniak, Evan Tsembelis, Taylor Jackson and Greg Feathers. H2OH-NO included teammates Jordan Toth, Josh Kaplan, James Sica and Zach Adams.

Toth said it was a sporting thing to do to chop the money and not challenge the team that had done just as well as they had done.

It was a final Nerd Herd almost didn’t make after they trailed in their semifinal round. In a four-team semifinal, with only one advancing to the finals, Nerd Herd sat in fourth place, 65 points out of first, before they stormed back into the lead with just 10 questions remaining.

Figliotti said falling behind in the semifinal heading into the last round of questions was “nerve wracking,” but the team used their experience in Masterminds competition to pull together.

“It was really cool,” Figliotti said of the win. “I love the competition. I think it’s an awesome opportunity because people come in, basically, for the money, but then they come out with skills to compete.”

In the finals, Nerd Herd took a 35 to 25 lead over H2OH-NO after the first warm-up round. The Jackson 4 lagged behind at -5, but rallied in the second round, where questions were posed to players individually, by answering seven of eight questions correctly and vaulting into a 135-135 tie with Nerd Herd.

Sica of H2OH-NO said the individual round questions sank the team, made up of members of the Vikings swim team. They missed six of eight individual questions.

“We got a lot of science questions,” Sica said. “We’re not really science oriented.”

“It was sort of tough to answer those questions. The individuals just killed us,” Adams said.

H2OH-NO rebounded to win the final round with 80 points, earning 10 points for 11 right answers and losing 10 for three misses to tie The Jackson 4 at 145. Nerd Herd held on by answering seven questions right and just two wrong to end with 185.