Big Spring Academic UIL Team dominates District 5-4A Academic Meet
The Big Spring Academic UIL Team continued its dominance at the District 5-4A Academic Meet held this past Saturday. The Steers scored 727 sweepstakes points easily outpacing the second place school, Levelland, who only had 340 points. 30 students in total qualified for the Regional meet to be held on the campus of Texas Tech.
“We had a big last year where we took several students to the State Meet,” Academic Coordinator Jennifer Adams stated. “We were afraid that it might have been a bit of a rebuilding year, But the students stepped up and showed their true potential.”
Several Steers took home the gold in multiple events. Madeline Jordan-Hisel paced the journalism team placing first in Copy Editing, Editorial Writing, and Feature Writing as well as placing fourth in News Writing. Following his gold medal performance at the Congressional Debate State Meet in January, Tyler Grove placed first in both Lincoln-Douglas Debate as well as Persuasive Extemporaneous Speaking. Juliana Summers placed first in both Spelling as well as Poetry Interpretation. Kaiden Roberts placed first in Mathematics and Number Sense. lian Calixto 3rd in Poetry Interpretation, Sanchez 2nd in Prose Interpretation, Kathryn Willis 3rd in Prose Interpretation, Trinity LaPlante 2nd in Ready Writing, Ashley Melendez 3rd in Ready Writing, Roberts who placed 2nd in Science as well as being the top Biology Scorer, James Pasqual 2nd Spelling, Norwood 3rd Spelling, And Ethan Barker 3rd in Informative Speaking.
Several more students qualified for the Regional Meet by virtue of their first place team finish, these include; Summers, Pasqual, Norwood, and Anna Lilly Payne in Spelling; Pirraglia, Hailey Harrington, Elijah Arriaga, and Gavin Corley in calculator Applications; Correa, Paraedez Payne, and Alexander Trinidad in Current Events; Norwood, Franco, and Melendez in Literary Criticism; Roberts, Pirraglia, Corley and Juaquin Arguello in Number Sense; Roberts, Arguello, Arriaga, and Paraedez in Science.
The Speech Team also scored as the top team giving up only two of the 15 speech Regional Qualifications.
Big Spring also had the second Place Accounting Team, Journalism Team, and Mathematics Team.
This is the sixth year in a row that the Steer Academic Team has won the district crown.
Members of the Big Spring High School UIL Ahtletic team pose with all their medals they won at the District 5-4A UIL Academic Meet this past Saturday.
Also placing first were Luis Aguirre in Computer Applications, , Kadence Norwood in Literary Criticism, Keila Reyes in Prose Interpretation, Leila Franco in Ready Writing, Armando Bravo in Social Studies, and Chloe Sanchez in Informative Speaking. Placing in the top three and also earning a spot at the Regional Meet were Rolando Martinez 3rd in Accounting, Ryleigh Pirraglia 2nd in both Calculator Applications and Number Sense, Ella Correa who was 2nd in both Current Events and Informative speaking, Raiden Paraedez 3rd in Current Events, James Barker 3rd in Feature Writing, Vanya Perez-Ramirez 2nd in Headline Writing, Langston Duran 3rd in LD Debate, Franco 3rd in Literary Criticism, Braxton Gonzales 3rd in Persuasive Speaking and Poetry Interpretation, Jyl