The UIL Academic team won Sweepstakes at the Sabine Pass Shark Meat X last Saturday, March 4. This was the third time this UIL season that the team has won the Sweepstakes title.

In news writing, senior Valen Elliott placed third and senior Bailey Noah placed fourth; Noah also placed second in feature writing. She has placed at all of the practice meets she has attended this year and has grown in her skills since she first started competing last year.

“Participating in UIL journalism has definitely made me a better writer,” Noah said. “It helped me be able to write stories faster in my journalism class with the same amount of great content. And although it was a practice meet, I felt very fulfilled. Placing second is great, but for district, I’m aiming for first.”

The ready writing team placed third overall and senior Autumn Rendall placed fourth individually.

“Placing at Sabine Pass felt very rewarding,” Rendall said. “Ready writing is my favorite event because, out of all my other events, it requires the most effort. We competed against both small and large schools, so knowing I was among them felt amazing.”

The general math team placed first, with junior Chandler Barr placing first and senior Chris Cook placing fifth. Barr also placed first in number sense and third in science. He helped the science team place second overall and he was awarded the top physics score.

“This is actually my first year participating in UIL because I only moved to Texas last summer, but I did take part in other academic competitions before,” Barr said. “I was actually quite surprised that I had placed as well as I did at Sabine Pass, so getting the medals was pretty exciting. It was the first time that I had placed first in number sense or general math, which is certainly an accomplishment. I also got my personal best scores in both general math and science, so overall it was probably the best competition I have been to this far.”

In prose, sophomore Ashlyn Ellis placed first and junior Alora Jones placed fifth. In the poetry competition, junior Dalton Teeler placed first and senior Connor Alexander placed second.

“I’ve participated in prose and poetry since freshmen year and I’ve loved every second of it, so placing at Sabine Pass was such a blessing,” Teeler said. “Knowing my hard work had finally paid off felt amazing and I couldn’t have done it without the support from my friends and family and the amazing coaching of Clark Reed. Hopefully I can do just as well at district.”

The computer science team also managed to bring home a win, placing first as a team. Cook placed first individually, while junior Lucas Russell placed second, sophomore Sukhjot Singh placed third and junior Heidi Shaffer placed fifth.

“We went to this meet having a team separated because we took nine of our kids to Code Wars, so every point that every single one of them made on every team mattered,” computer science teacher Terry Morris said. “Had any of them not have placed, we wouldn’t have won.”

Other results from the meet include: Current Events – Spencer Johns, 6th; Persuasive Speaking – Aman Tejani, 1st; Informative Speaking – Akhil Tejani, 1st, Adrienne Norris, 3rd, 1st place team.

The UIL Academic teams will compete at the District meet on March 25 at Hamshire-Fannett High School.