School Claims Twin Title With 8

Fredonia, N.Y.'s, place in the Guinness Book of Records is being challenged by another upstate New York community.

Fredonia High School earned a spot in the Guinness book for having seven sets of twins among this year's freshman class.

But officials at the Indian River Middle School in northern New York say they can top that. They have eight sets of twins in the sixth grade. The eighth set moved in several weeks ago. Until then, they had four sets of identical twins and three sets of fraternal twins.

Fraternal twins Brier and Brody Riggs, 12, put River Middle School in the lead.

"We think it's pretty exciting. It's really cool," Brody tells The Early Show co-anchor Rene Syler, "It was pretty cool to know that there were a lot of twins in the school."

Guidance counselor Brian Moore is very excited, too. Through an Associated Press article he read in January, he learned of the record and decided to contact the book of world records.

Moore says, "I said, 'Well, why don't we go for it. Let's put this together and see what happens.'" The twins are all in the sixth grade.

And though he says they are still awaiting confirmation from Guinness that they hold the record for most sets of twins in the same class, for now they are enjoying the spot light. The eight sets of twins were seen on The Early Show along with sixth grade teacher Daniel Riordan.

Riordan says in the 8 years since he's been at the school, this is the first time he's seen so many twins at one time and admits to having a little fun with the twins and fooling other teachers with the help of identical twins Samantha and Savannah, who turned 12 on April 3.

"We dress different so we pick out each other's clothes and we switch. It was Mr. Riordan's idea," Savannah says, "Because Mr. Riordan and Mr. Whitly like to joke around with each other a lot."

Asked if Riordan still has trouble setting them apart, he says, The first couple weeks of school, I'm not going to lie to you, it can be a little tricky. When you do make that mistake, the kids are the first ones to point out the mistake to you whenever they can prove an adult wrong. But once the school year gets going, it makes it a little easier."