Virtual UIL practice hosted by Haskell

By Sandy Morris

With the spring semester comes the start of UIL academic contests, and Albany High School students are starting this season off with a virtual meet hosted by Haskell High School. 

Albany High School UIL coordinator Rick Davis said there are 17 students participating in the meet this week, with many students participating in multiple events.

“Because this is a virtual meet, the students are doing everything here throughout the week,” said Davis. “Then we submit entries to Haskell on Saturday, if not before.”

Davis said writing papers will be submitted for judges to grade but everything else must be graded once locally before being submitted to Haskell, whose judges will then conduct the second grading. 

“During a typical UIL tournament, all tests are graded twice with the top eight or so graded a third time to verify the final six,” said Davis. 

Davis said finding time to test all of the students at mutually available times is the biggest challenge he is facing right now.

Students will be competing in a number of categories including News Writing, Feature Writing, Editorial Writing, Headline Writing, and Copy Editing, all sponsored by Donnie Lucas. 

“Glen Hill is the sponsor for Social Studies and I do believe this is the first time I have had a principal coach an event,” said Davis.

Other sponsors are Melanie Turner for Spelling, Jennifer Everitt for Ready Writing, Rod Britting for Current Issues and Events, André Raymond for Science sponsor and Ricky Davis for Number Sense, Calculator, and Mathematics.  

Jenny Scott is director of the One Act Play. 

At this time, it is anticipated that all UIL Academic meets will be conducted virtually this spring.