On Sunday, April 23, five Spudsters packed up and traveled six hours for the State Journalism competition in Norfolk, Nebraska. Editors-in-Chief, Autumn Hoff and Safyre Yearling, Senior Editor, Sharia Williamson, Junior Website Editor, Aubrie Lawrence, and first year Staff Writer, Zachary Placek all qualified to compete in the competition.

In order to qualify for state, one must submit an original work to the preliminary contest by March 1. From there, the works are judged and one must place in the top 12 to qualify. When preliminary results came out, the five staff members who qualified showed great promise through their rankings. Sharia placed fourth in Advertising. Autumn placed sixth in Editorial Cartooning and Aubrie placed eighth in Sports Feature Writing. Safyre became double entered, placing second in Advertising and twelfth in Column Writing. Zac became the sole triple entry, placing seventh in Headline Writing, third in Column Writing and third Newspaper Feature Writing. However, the rules state that qualifiers may only compete in two categories at the competition, so Zac decided to compete in Column and Headline Writing.

The competition took place at Northeast Community College on the morning of April 24, 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 the NSAA. We then walked across the parking lot to the Lifelong Learning Center, where we waited to compete. Zac, Autumn, Sharia, and Safyre all competed in 8:45 a.m. sessions, then Zac, Aubrie and Safyre went on to compete at 10:30 a.m. Mrs. Digmann was also busy, proctoring the 10:30 Newspaper News Writing session.

In the Advertising session, competitors were asked to create an ad for a fictitious bowling alley. The competitors were given an hour and fifteen minutes to put together their ad from scratch, using images and information given to them. 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 using the cameras on school computers should be used to watch students.

In Sports Feature Writing, competitors were asked to write a feature column on the Norfolk Catholic High School football coach.

Headline Writing gave students six stories to read and were asked to headline three of them. They were required to do a two line headline, a three line headline and one of their choice.

In Column Writing, two prompts were given to the competitors. They were asked to select one and create a column story, based on that topic.

After everyone competed, they were dismissed to lunch. The Spud team went to Culver’s, where they got the chance to speak about their competitions and discuss the impending awards ceremony. Awards were to begin at 2:30 p.m. Central Time.

After lunch, teams headed back to the college campus. This year, awards for Class A and Class B schools were separated. Class A awards took place in the Cox Activities Center, while Class B was in the Lifelong

Learning Center.

In order to earn a medal, you had to place 6th or higher in your category. In Sports Feature Writing, Aubrie Lawrence did just that and earned herself a sixth place medal. Autumn Hoff also medaled, placing sixth in Editorial Cartooning. Safyre Yearling was named the 2018 Class B State Journalism Column Writing Champion.

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!