State Bound

By Sandy Morris

Albany High School senior Tana Thompson will advance in two events to the University Interscholastic League state academic meet to be held at Abilene Wylie High School on Saturday, May 1.

Fellow senior Hannah Trail, and junior Luke Ivy also placed in the top three at the regional level competition held at Grayson College in Denison last weekend, qualifying them for the state level along with Thompson.

Thompson earned a second place in both Feature Writing and Headline Writing to earn her trip to state. She also won sixth place in Editorial Writing. 

Trail earned a ticket to the state meet after placing first in Editorial Writing. 

Ivy will accompany the two seniors to Abilene after taking second place in Science. Ivy is the alternate for Top Biology and Top Chemistry, which means he had the second highest score in both areas.

Ivy also placed fourth in Copy Editing. 

Several other Albany students placed in the top six in their events.

AHS UIL coordinator Rick Davis said there were 33 schools represented at the regional meet.

“We finished in seventh place, just three points behind sixth place,” said Davis. “Team wise, we got Top Journalism Team and third place team in Science.”

In addition to Thompson, Trail, and Ivy, the journalism team also included Sarah Cotter and Susie Cormack.

Along with Ivy, the third place Science team included members Sidney Bartee, Trail, and Paige Picquet.

Students who placed at the regional level, but did not advance were as follows: 

Sarah Cotter – fifth place, News Writing

Sidney Russell – fifth place, Spelling and Vocabulary.

Other local students competing last weekend were Jackson Chapman, Carli Edgar, Morgan Garcia, Corbin Roberts, Ella Webb, and William Webb. 

State Contest

Davis said this year’s state meet is being conducted differently than previous years when all qualifiers competed at the University of Texas in Austin.

“The state has set up a ‘hub’ in each of the Education Service Center Regions across the state and each school is allowed to sign up at the closest one,” said Davis. “When we are at Abilene Wylie, there could be 1A-6A schools there just like at the state meet in Austin, but we will only compete against the 2A schools.”

Davis also said he is not sure how the grading will occur, especially for the journalism papers.

“All journalism entries have to be compared to all of the other entries across the state for 2A,” he said. “We are still waiting on an explanation of how the grading will go down.”

Overall, Davis said he and the other sponsors are very proud of all of their students.

“They all represented Albany very well,” he said. “I am particularly proud of the journalism competitors for taking top team in the region.”