Riverhead Latinist team wins big at Certamen competition

The Ides of March turned out to be a pretty good day for the Blue Wave Latinists. The Riverhead High School team placed in all levels of competition at the 11th annual Suffolk County Certamen competition Tuesday at Stony Brook University.

“Congratulations to all the Riverhead Latinists who represented their alma mater at this prestigious event and especially to those who came home crowned with the laurels of victory,” Latin teacher Lorene Custer stated in a press release.

Riverhead’s team was among 13 other schools who participated in the event, in which the county’s best Latin students go head-to-head in knowledge-based questions about Latin grammar and translation, ancient Greco-Roman mythology, English word origins, and all manner of ancient historical and cultural trivia.

The Blue Waves’ Advanced A Team took top honors in the Level IV competition, making those seniors the highest-rated Latinists in the region.  The Riverhead Advanced B squad of juniors finished in third place.

Riverhead High School ninth graders ranked in third place and the Blue Waves 10th graders earned first place in the Regents Level 3 competition. At the middle school tier, the students placed second.

Scroll down for a full list of the winners:

Level I – Eighth grade: Captain Lila Bowe, Lily Kutner, Brian Noone and Kylie Plitt

Level II – Ninth grade: Captain Julia Divan, Dominic Bossey, Sidney Huber and Brittney Miller

Level III – 10th grade: Captain Bobby Stahl, Madison Cohen, Evelyn Kennedy-Jaffe and Juliette Lehman

Level IV – 11th and 12th grades: Captain Shannon Zeltmann, Brielle Borges, Dominique Marichal and Roy Vazquez

Level IV – 11th and 12th grades: Captain Helene Drozd, Jose Alvizures, Peter Cook and Gwen Hilles