Our Cypress Springs UIL teams are making a name for themselves across the district. They competed at the District meet on March 28th at Cy Woods and placed fourth for overall school sweepstakes. Eleven students will be advancing to the Regional meet hosted at Baylor University on April 24th-25th.
“Nobody expected our school to do that well,” Academic UIL Director Mr. Jose Chapela said. “There were a number of surprises and upsets, but we still have regionals, so we’re not finished.”
Our Social Studies and Spelling and Vocabulary teams placed first overall to advance to Regionals.
Individually, in Social Studies senior Haider Murtaza got first, junior Joseph Oguejiofor got third, senior Christopher Ordonez got fifth, and senior Juan Olivia got 15th. 
Individually in Spelling and Vocabulary, senior Christian Jack got first, senior Toan Nguyen got second, senior Ethan Rocha got third, and junior Louise Campo got fifth.
“You can’t catch up to someone who doesn’t slow down,” Rocha said. “We expect a clean sweep. We’re aiming for top four in the region.”
Destiny Onwuchekwa placed first in Poetry Interpretation to advance.
Our journalism team had an impressive day as well finishing second overall and brought home medals in all five journalism events. Senior Hershie Soriano advances to Regionals taking 1st in Headline Writing and second in Newswriting. She also medaled in Feature Writing with fifth place. Junior Sebastian Rodriguez placed third in Editorial Writing to advance. Senior Xinh Xinh Trinh medaled in copyediting in fifth place while Toan Nguyen medaled in sixth place.
Trinh also placed second in Biology, fourth in Chemistry and seventh in Science overall. Rodriguez also placed fifth in Current Events and Issues to add to the medal collection.
“I think they did good, but I know they could do a lot better,” UIL Manager Lenrich Camaddo said. “That’s just who they are: always improving and never slowing down. I can’t wait to see what they do at Regionals.”
