State Qualifiers

By Sandy Morris

Albany High School will send three students to the University Interscholastic League state academic meet this Saturday, May 1.

Because of COVID precautions, the event is being held at Abilene Wylie High School rather than in Austin.

Senior Tana Thompson advances in Feature Writing and Headline Writing, senior Hannah Trail will compete in Editorial Writing, and junior Luke Ivy will take part in the Science competition. 

Journalism sponsor Donnie Lucas and science sponsor André Raymond will attend the event with their students.

AHS UIL coordinator Rick Davis will also attend the contest, and he explained that because the state meet is being held at ‘hubs’ in each of the regional education service centers instead of in Austin at the University of Texas, the grading will also be done differently from a typical year. 

“The students will submit their documents, essays, and writing entries in Abilene and then everything will be uploaded for a centralized grading supervised by the UIL state office and the state contest directors,” said Davis. 

Testing and writing events will be verified on Monday, May 3 from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. At 2:00 p.m., the school contact on the state registration form will be emailed links to the verification box folder for each contest.

Coaches have until 5:00 p.m. to verify grading, scoring, and entry into the online system per the instructions they are sent in the email.

Following verification, results will be announced to the public in the online entry system. A link to access the results will be posted on the academic state meet website, and awards will be shipped to the winners at their recipient schools. 

Davis said while he isn’t crazy about how this year is playing out, he is thankful the students are getting to compete.

“We have three very talented students competing at the state level,” said Davis. “Any one of them could bring home a medal. I’m hoping all three of them do.”