District UIL for academics was held Saturday March 29th and our Panthers had 15 top eight finishes in various events and five scholars are advancing to Regionals. Our teams grew in numbers, put in hours preparing and we improved our results tremendously from last year.
Social Studies placed third as a team only missing 1st place by six points. Christopher Ordonez won 1st place while Haider Murtaza took second and both are advancing to Regionals. Ordonez also took 8th place in Current Events and Issues. Aerell McKnight captured second place in Computer Science and advances to Regionals. The entire Computer science team only missed out on 3rd place overall by less than one programming problem.
Speech and Debate shined with Christian Jack and Destiny Onwuchekwa making finals taking second and fifth respectively. Jack will represent at Regionals in Poetry Interpretation.
Journalism contestants also left their mark placing in four out of five events. Hershie Soriano won two medals with a fifth place in newswriting and third place in featuring writing. Soriano advances to Regionals in Feature writing and hopes to qualify for State after doing so last year. Toan Nguyen placed 5th in copy editing and Xinh Xinh Trinh placed fifth in Headline Writing.
Manuella Kenardi finished in second place with her individual Biology score and the whole Science team improved to 4th place from 7th place last year.
Ethan Rocha led the way in Spelling and Vocabulary finishing fifth while the team as a whole placed 4th.
Regional competition will take place April 25-26th in Waco.
