UIL Districts were marked by a slew of successes for the school’s academic UIL teams. Thirty-one students will advance from district to compete in the regional meet at Prosper High School, and four teams won first place: current issues and events, speech and debate, spelling and vocabulary, and computer science.

In current issues and events, sophomore Zachary Farrell placed fourth and will serve as an alternate to regionals. Freshman Kunal Kapur placed fifth, freshman Tajvir Singh placed seventh, and junior Seth Roundtree placed ninth. As a team, they will advance to regionals. Spelling and vocabulary took first place team as well, with sophomore Ariel Kokoricha in first and senior Anna Rouse in third place.  

In computer applications, sophomore Sabeeh Shaikh placed first and sophomore Hudson Samuels placed fourth. They will also advance to regionals–Shaikh as a competitor, Samuels as an alternate. The number sense team took second place. In computer science, senior Samuel Bell placed first, advancing to regionals. Senior Andrew Chang placed second, advancing as well.  Senior Kyle Sorstokke placed third, and freshman Mark Wen placed fourth. The team as a whole took first place.

Senior Hannah Ortega took second in headline writing, news writing, and feature writing. Senior Nick Smith took first in headline writing, third in news writing, and fourth in feature writing. In editorial writing, sophomores Kelsey Carroll and Lily Hager took first and third, respectively. Carroll also took first in feature writing, third in headline writing, and first in news writing. The overall journalism team took first.

“I was extremely surprised because I didn’t go into it with that many expectations,” Carroll said. “I did well last year, but I didn’t know if that same luck would follow me through to this school year. It felt really good to know that I had so much more success than I had in the past years.”

In Lincoln Douglas Debate, junior Collins Morgan and sophomore Ashley Rihani will compete in regionals, as they took first and second, respectively. In persuasive speaking, Morgan took first and Singh took second. In poetry interpretation, sophomore Shivani Radhakrishnan took first, advancing to regionals. In prose interpretation, sophomore Luke Wheatley took second. In informative speaking, Farrell took third and Rouse took first, advancing to regionals.

“I didn’t really know what to expect,” speech and debate coach Tami Parker said. “I knew that we had been training really hard and all the coaches for UIL had been working hard, but last year we came in second place to Highland Park, so I wasn’t sure. But as the results started coming in, I was very pleased that we were doing so well and took first.”