On Sunday, April 23, five Spudsters packed up and traveled six hours for the State Journalism competition in Norfolk, Nebraska. Senior and Editor-in-Chief, Peyton Stoike, juniors and co-Web Editors, Autumn Hoff and Safyre Yearling, junior Staff Writer, Sharia Williamson, and sophomore Staff Writer, Aubrie Lawrence, all qualified for the competition.

The competition took place at Northeast Community College and was broken up into two sessions. Qualifiers and their advisers gathered in the gym of the college to listen to a short welcome from NSAA. Afterwards, several teams walked to the campus Starbucks, where everyone got that extra dose of caffeine, before sessions. We then walked to the Lifelong Learning Center, where we waited to compete. Because Aubrie and Peyton both qualified in categories that were ranked in preliminaries, they did not have a session. Autumn, Sharia, and Safyre all competed in 10:30 am sessions. Mrs. Digmann was also busy, proctoring the 10:30 Headlines session.

In the Advertising session, competitors were asked to create an ad for a fictitious restaurant that was hiring. The competitors were given an hour and a half to put together their ad from scratch and when time was up, they were asked to save a .PDF version of the image to the provided flash drive for judging.

In Editorial Cartooning, competitors were given a prompt, asking for them to draw a political cartoon debating whether or not BMI (body mass index) scores should be sent home with students.

“When I received the prompt for my editorial cartoon, I thought to myself ‘what a horrible thing to do to kids’. I realized how difficult the prompt was to draw without offending anyone that it would relate to, so I decided to go with something that focused on both ends of the scale,” said Hoff, who competed in Editorial Cartooning.

Aubrie, Safyre, and Peyton qualified in In-Depth News Coverage, which is a story composed by three or more authors. Usually, these stories are set up with infographics and various formats, however because Spud is strictly online, formatting and layout is harder to do. Despite this, Spud has decided to begin creating infographics to go with their one in-depth story a month; another new addition to the newspaper.

After lunch, teams headed back to the college campus, where the award ceremony was held in the gym. In order to earn a medal, you had to place 6th or higher in your category. Safyre Yearling placed exactly that in Advertising and received the lone medal. Sharia also competed in Advertising and despite some technical difficulties in Photoshop, earned 7th place. Peyton Stoike earned 7th place in Sports Action Photography. Autumn Hoff earned 8th place in Editorial Cartooning. Aubrie Lawrence, Peyton Stoike, and Safyre Yearling earned 7th place in In-Depth News Coverage.

Overall, the trip was an amazing experience that left us with tons of new memories. The Spud is very excited for next year’s competition and cannot wait to see what the new “season” has in store!