Cooperstown Central School seniors Bailey Gardner and Alexandra Siracusa and middle/high school art teacher Eileen Murphy may not have the experience of the other 10 teams competing in the 2006 New York State Snow Sculpting Championship, but there's no doubt they have the enthusiasm.

The three were ecstatic to learn this week that they had been accepted as one of the teams competing in the 72-hour sculpt-a-thon, which is being held in Lakefront Park Feb. 16-19.

"We're psyched, we're very excited," Murphy said Tuesday afternoon.

"It's just going to be a lot of fun," Gardner said Wednesday morning.

The three will be the only local team in a competition that lasts three days and will see carvers transform a 12-ton, 10 feet-high block of man-made snow into a work of art.

The team's design, titled "A Peace of Everyone," features a griffin standing upright holding a globe in one it's front paws and resting the other on a pyramid. A griffin is a half-lion, half-eagle hybrid, featuring the face and wings of an eagle and the fierce body of a lion.

"We think it would be a really great sculpture with meaning and beauty," Murphy said. "This griffin represents all cultures, and the history and unity of the planet".

Siracusa said the worldly theme reflected their artistic ideals and came about in part because both she and Gardner are going abroad as Rotary exchange students next year. Siracusa is going to Hungary and Gardner to Thailand.

"We didn't want to have a specific religion or country represented," she said. "It has everything."

Murphy said her two students began getting involved in the project after a demonstration in Lakefront Park. They came down with fellow senior Jen Hensly and got hooked almost immediately, she said.

Murphy said she has been carving snow sculptures on Main Street for the last 25 years as part of the Winter Carnival, but both Siracusa and Gardner said they have no experience with snow-sculpting or sculpting of any kind except for last year's practice run.

The three said they aren't expecting to win the competition, since they're relative amateurs using the provided, basic tools competing with seasoned professionals, but they do expect to have a blast.

"It's just going to be a lot of fun," Gardner said.

Siracusa echoed Gardner's sentiments.

"We're not really doing it for the money or anything we're doing it for fun," she said. "We just hope it works."

"We'll probably laugh pretty hard," Murphy said.