Five Langham students advanced to regionals at the District Academic U.I.L competition March 24th. The District Meet for 2018 were held on Friday, March 23rd, and Saturday the 24th. Organized at Langham, different events were held in different parts of the school.  

     “Editorial writing is the different opinionated pieces within a newspaper. Nothing is one hundred percent factual and should be over a topic in which you can pick a side,” junior Connor Duskie said.

     Because multiple events went on at the same time, NHS (National Honor Society) volunteered their services showing kids to different classrooms and helping to sell food.

     “I wasn’t expecting to win,” Duskie said. “I had only practiced once, versus the other kids, and I didn’t receive a lot of criticism from judges, so I was very surprised.”  

     Another area in which Langham placed first is Spelling and Vocabulary. For the Spelling and Vocabulary U.I.L participants are given a list of 1500 words though only 350 are chosen. You must memorize the definition of the word and how the word can be used in sentences. There are 3 parts: identifying misspelled words and correcting them, matching the vocabulary word to the definition, and listening to the word being pronounced followed by writing it down.

     “I didn’t even know there was a spelling U.I.L at Langham until my English teacher Mrs. Miller told me,” junior and first place recipient Anh Nguyen said. “ I didn’t even know I advanced to regionals. Mrs. Miller called me to tell me and I drove to Langham to get my medal. Overall, I was just really surprised and happy to know my efforts paid off.”

     Preparing for any U.I.L event can be very taxing mentally and physically. A lot of preparation goes into these competitions put out by students hoping to place well.

     “To prepare for this contest, I made multiple Quizlets that I could practice spelling, and reviewing the words with,” Nguyen said.

     Another event Langham placed in was Poetry Interpretation.

     “Poetry Interpretation is when you put together pieces of poetry that mean something to you or advocate for a cause, and then stand in front of an audience to perform it in hopes to educate and persuade the audience to open their eyes to the cause,” senior Ashlynn Hose said.

     For this event Langham did not place first, however we placed within the top 6.

     “Being in debate I had to do prose, but this year I decided to do poetry because I felt that it was a bit out of my comfort zone,” Hose said. “Poetry expresses so much more feeling if you let it.”

Last year, Langham had nine people compete in district meets and advance to regionals. Out of those nine, just one,  advanced to state.

“I was thinking about having something after school to inform students about academic U.I.L, and hopefully persuade more students to participate next year,” assistant principal Mrs. Gonzalez said.