Much like sports and athletics, the academic programs at the school have preliminary tournaments, districts, regionals and state. On Wednesday, UIL districts for a variety of academic events will be held at the high school on what will be an early release day.
“There will be accounting, math events, computer applications and sciences, the debate and speech events, news writing and journalism events, science events, social studies and literary criticism, spelling and vocabulary, and a world events category, so it’s a wide variety of events, not just speech, but all of the academic event,” school UIL Director Tami Parker said.
The school’s academic teams have competed in UIL events previously, but much like it was for athletics, this year will be a little bit different than before.
“This is our first year in 4A,” Parker said. “I feel good about the coaches, however not having seen some of the other schools I’m not sure how we will do for sure. In some of the preliminary events and practice meets we’ve been to the kids have done very nicely so I feel like our chances are really good.”
The teams have been hard at work preparing for the upcoming tournament.
“We practice every Monday afternoon, but we’ve only been to one practice meet, so most of our practice has been here at school,” math coach Keith Christian said. “When the students went to the practice meet they did pretty well. One thing I’ve been seeing is when we have practiced at school, their scores have been improving, so we should do well.”
For some of the teams in different events, it’s been hard to get practice in.
“Next week is the deadline for when all of our yearbook proofs have to be in so we haven’t been able to focus and practice as much as I’d hoped,” yearbook teacher Mary Woodruff said. “However most of these kids, including the kids who are on news and feature writing have been trained now for several years, so it’s more of a review that they’re going through right now and a lot of what they do at UIL is what they do in class for publications.”
Some teams haven’t yet gotten the opportunity to compete against other schools.
“We were set to go to a practice meet, but the other team backed out and we didn’t end up going,” science coach Michael Voth said. “But the students study and they come to me if they have any questions. I think they’ll do well, we should have some advance.”
Even if students and teachers won’t be involved with the event next week, they will see a change in their day.
“Some of the teachers will have to give up our classrooms on Wednesday, and some of the students will be moved to different rooms,” Woodruff said. “It’s really important though, it’s something colleges like to see that you have done so it’s worth it to participate.”
