Riverhead Latin Team Wins Big at Stony Brook Competition

On Monday, the Riverhead Latin Team competed in the annual Suffolk County Declamatio, and came home with 11 out of 14 awards. The event, held at Stony Brook University, tested students' memory and diction by having them recite passages from Latin literature.

Latinist and Riverhead High School Junior Daniel Raynor wrote the following eloquent passage (thankfully not in Latin) about the team's success:

By the afternoon of November 14, 2011, it was for sure: Riverhead had yet again dominated in the SUNY Stony Brook’s annual Suffolk County Declamatio, a competition in which students dramatically deliver from memory selected passages of Latin literature.Through months of preparation, Latin students in Levels I and II memorized passages of roughly one hundred words, while those in the advanced Level III, committed to memory passages of about one hundred fifty words.

Thanks to the diligent work of Middle School Latin teacher Ms. Custer and High School Latin teacher Doctor Greenberger, the memorized passages, though already remarkable, were transformed into dramatized declamations, which gave Riverhead an extra edge over their competitors.

At the middle school Level I, there was a first: the recitations were so outstanding that the judges appointed three first place winners. They were, in no particular order, Gwen “Aqua Columba” Hilles, Peter “Argentus” Cook, and Helene “Abelinda Lunae” Drozd. Second place went to Emily “Hibernia Rosa” Pearce, and third to Aidan “Ignis Lux” Saltini. The five Level I competitors from Riverhead took all three places, which most people did not know was possible.

Due to a large number of participants in Level II, they were split into two groups: Cicero and Seneca. In the Cicero division, James “Octavius Aurelius” Rios took first, Erin “Pandibula” Plitt won second, and Emily “Marnibear” Behr placed in third, while in the Seneca division Liana “Bellatrix Atalanta” Salgado won first place.

Finally, in the high school advanced Level III, second place went to Katelyn “Amystella” McKissick, a sophomore, and John “Odysseus Tyrannus” Rios, a senior, won first place along with the first ever “Suffolk Classical Society Scholarship” in recognition of his many triumphs in Declamatio and Certamen (a competition held in the Spring) over the past six years.

At the end of a very dramatic, eventful day, Riverhead returned home with a righteously earned 11 out of 14 awards. Not too shabby.