The annual Turkey Bowl is less than a month away, and everyone involved is getting ready for game day. Staff members are getting everything organized while the players are training with their respective teams hoping to come out on top.
A lot of preparation goes into the Turkey Bowl every year such as coverage areas, security, substitutes, lunches and nurses.
“We start out by discussing venue security,” organizer Deidra Dumm said. “All the teachers that are going to be involved in coverage, the substitutes that we need. Typically, Mr. Dumm and I sit down with all of the principals and we choose a date, then we have to reach out to quite a few people. We have to coordinate with the junior high because we’re using their field and their maintenance team. We have to coordinate with everybody here at the high school including our maintenance because they also hold our very big lunch. We have to coordinate with our nurses to make sure that they are on call, and then we have an extra nurse available. We have to coordinate with security to make sure security is taken care of, and then after that we have to go into making sure that we’re registering all of our teams and making sure that all the students are eligible to play.”
Team slots filled up very quickly, with most being taken in only seven minutes,” Dumm said. “The first 11 were completed by 7:07 in the morning. So from seven o’clock until 7:07 [a.m.] that was the first 11. The 12th team came in at 7:46 a.m., and then there was a 13th team. And the 13th team did not come in until 8:59 [a.m.], so about seven minutes, and 11 of them were already taken,”
According to Dumm, the situation regarding whether or not students will be allowed to be outside to watch the Turkey Bowl is still uncertain.
“We’re unsure at this point, and that has to do a lot with teacher coverage and who can be outside and inside. We will definitely be live streaming, so MLTV will be present, and MLTV will be live streaming all of the afternoon events into the school. The plan is, for any students who are in a large coverage area, they would have the game be live streamed into them, more than likely in the auditorium.”
This year’s Turkey Bowl will have more events such as teacher turkey races and a kickoff contest.
“We’re going to try to add in some additional events,” Dumm said. “One of those events that we’re hoping to add in is a Teacher Turkey race, where we put some teachers in big inflatable Turkey costumes, and then make them run across the field and race. And the other one we’re hoping to do is a kickoff contest, like a Pat McAfee College Game Day type of contest, where students have to see if they can kick a football a certain distance, and if they can kick it that distance, then they win prizes.”
Many other staff members have helped out with the Turkey Bowl preparations.
“Mr. Dumm and I are the junior/senior class advisers. ” Dumm said. “And then, in addition to that, we have quite a few referees. “The referees that we have are Mr. Adams, Mr. Palfey, Mr. Elvey, Mr. Picciotti, Mr. Prugar, Mr. Mencer, Mr. McKinney and Mr. Marasco. Mr. Fox is typically our MC. All of the principals are typically involved. We also have a Turkey Bowl committee, and on the Turkey Bowl committee this year we have Mr. Strawmier, who goes out with us as well. Mr. Strohmeyer runs our scoreboard for us, Señora Leonard, Mr. King, Mr. Green, Mrs. Giansante, Miss Fickes, and of course Mr. Baker, who is really instrumental in taking care of all of the things for MLTV. He’s out there all day making sure that everything is ready to go with our sound system. Every teacher in the building is involved. I will say we really have to thank our phys ed. teachers because they help us with a lot of coverage of classes. They really step up and help our guidance counselors help at lunchtime to cover some of the lunches. Really, all of the teachers here do get involved in some capacity, whether it’s covering for other people, monitoring things or just helping logistically put things together.”
Students playing in the Turkey Bowl have been preparing for game day
“We’ve been having practices once every weekend at the Penn State campus with everybody on the team,” Junior Liam Cicero said.
“We practice every single Sunday at Penn State Altoona Campus from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.,” Junior Derek Musser said.
The Turkey Bowl teams are confident in their chances of winning.
“I feel like it’s going to be tough, but if we practice and get better as a team, I think we have a chance,” Cicero said.
“I feel very confident, our team is full of athletic students,” Musser said.
