Survival of the Least Sleepy

By stacey becker

The Hempstead Survivor Challenge contestants looked more like a school of fish attacking food pellets than a group of high school seniors.

Wednesday night’s elimination game pitted the eight remaining survivors against each other in the Hempstead High School swimming pool.

“I wasn’t expecting this,” said Danielle Nicks, one of the two eliminated survivors. “I thought we were going to have to swim.”

The game, in which $10 worth of change was thrown in one corner of Hempstead’s pool, did allow some elements of swimming.

Survivors had to collect exactly $1 worth of coins in order to move on to the next round. Nicks and Lisa Hefel were the last two survivors without $1.

“(Water) would get up your nose and in your eyes,” said Nicks. “There were so many bodies around, it was hard to get back to your cup (to put the change inside).”

After being eliminated from the game, the girls said they wanted a warm shower and their beds. But they were glad to have participated in the week-long competition.

“I got close to a lot of people I never knew before, so it was a good experience,” Nicks said.

The penny plunge wasn’t the first elimination round on what turned out to be a very long Wednesday for the survivors.

At 3 a.m., a figure walked to the auditorium’s stage, where the 12 remaining competitors slept, and woke everyone for their early- morning elimination game.

The contest was: Complete 30 third-grade multiplication tables and a word search. Some learned that the brain sometimes doesn’t work efficiently before sunrise.

“I thought it was coming,” said Megan Ambrosy, one of four survivors eliminated from the challenge in the early-morning round. Ambrosy and her fellow eliminated survivor, Amber Gonzales, set their alarm clock for 3:45 a.m. They set it a little too late.

Nate Hubanks and Jonathan Goodfellow also were eliminated after they handed in their papers last. The remaining survivors walked back into the darkness, found their beds and went to sleep.

Organizers of the Hempstead Survivor Challenge decided to not have students run around the track, as stated in Wednesday’s TH.

Another elimination looms on the horizon before the final round on Friday. The five remaining boys and one remaining girl will continue on their quest to sleep at school and ultimately win a $200 gift certificate from Hy-Vee.

Originally published by stacey becker TH staff writer/sbecker@wcinetcom.

(c) 2008 Telegraph – Herald (Dubuque). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.