Contributing Writer
A combination of work ethic and superior language skills earned three Terlingua high-schoolers a trip to the University of Texas at Austin last month where they placed very well in the University Interscholastic League (UIL) state competition.
Two 11th graders, Helena Stark and Lydia Eby, became silver medalists in their respective disciplines and tenth-grader Blake Trester became eligible for state scholarship money by virtue of his performance.
“It’s hard to get to State,” said the students’ coach Sue Swafford, who teaches high school English. These kids first had to place in district and regional competitions to get there. Only the top kids in Texas make it to Austin for this competition.”
Ms. Swafford also noted that the region our kids compete in is geographically the largest in the state.
Helena won her silver medal in the Ready Writing category, a discipline in which students are given a magazine or newspaper article to read from which they have to, in turn, produce their own 1,000-word essay.
“Can you imagine?” asked Ms. Swafford. “The article Helena had to work with had to do with how the younger generation is expected to solve the problems of the world.”
Well, a silver medal is a pretty good place to start.
Lydia won her silver medal in the Feature Writing category. She was faced with a bit of a twist provided by, of all things, breaking news.
“Generally, they give the kids a topic to research and report on,” said Ms. Swafford. “But this year they actually had the contestants attend a press conference. They got to ask the school’s retiring basketball coach questions for 30 minutes and then they were given an hour to write up their stories. That’s a lot of pressure. Lydia said she thought it was really cool because she had written something that actually could have been published.”
Blake Trester’s category was Headline Writing, a competition in which the students are given six stories to read and then given 45 minutes to write headlines and sub-headlines of a specific length and type size for each story.
“Blake didn’t place,” said Ms. Swafford. “But he still did very
well. He’s only a tenth-grader, after all, and just by earning his way
to the state level he’s going to get scholarship money. I’m very proud
of all three of them.”
Andy and his wife Rose have lived in Terlingua for two years after spending 12 years at the helm of the Adirondack Mountain Sun, a weekly newspaper in upstate New York. They do not miss upstate New York - especially that part of upstate New York that is 30 degrees below zero for weeks on end. They are glad to be here.
Three Terlingua high-schoolers recently competed successfully at the UIL State Scholastic competition in Austin. They are (l-r) Lydia Eby, Coach Sue Swafford, Blake Trester and Helena Stark. Blake is a sophomore and Lydia and Helena are juniors.
