The University of Texas at Austin will be an academic arena next week as students statewide travel to the capitol for the University Interscholastic League (UIL) academic state meet.
Five Scurry County students will compete at the state competition and have spent recent weeks preparing for the academic challenge.
Snyder High School junior Rena Morrell will compete in spelling and vocabulary for her third consecutive year at the state meet.
“Overall, I think I have a greater advantage in general because I have a large spelling background,” Morrell said. “I’ve studied words for about eight years, so that’s an advantage for sure.”
Morrell began practicing for the spelling and vocabulary competition about 10 months ago and stressed the importance of learning — not memorizing.
“I think a big misconception is that learning and memorizing are the same thing,” she said. “You don’t just memorize the order of the letters. To learn words, you have to take them apart. For example, in the word “terraqueous,” the root terra means ‘earth’ and aqua means ‘water.’ The -ous is adjective. It’s having to do with land and water. That’s two roots, a suffix and the definition.”
Morrell studies by beginning with a mini-practice, consisting of 10 questions.
“In the first five questions, there are five words and you have to pick which one is misspelled and spell it correctly,” she said. “The next five questions are vocabulary. Then we move to the off-list (not on the UIL Word Power list) books. My stepdad created books of different categories of words, and we just read through a different category each night. Then we write 20 off-list words. After that, we do 25 vocabulary cards and write 70 on-list words.”
Also competing in spelling and vocabulary at the state competition is Ira ISD senior Tori Rosas. Rosas uses a website to study.
“I study through Quizlet online,” she said. “The test has multiple choice questions. You can pick which words work in a sentence, so you have to know vocabulary. There’s also another part to the test where they call out words, and you have to write them out.”
Like Morrell, Rosas has gone to the state spelling and vocabulary competition every year since she was a freshman.
“Because I’ve gone every year, I know what to expect,” she said. “I’ve gotten better at studying every year and know what I’m doing, but it also gets to the point where I can only know so much. I feel like I’m at the best I can get, so it’s really confidence at this point that helps me.”
Also representing Ira is senior JoMarie Sanchez, who will compete in ready writing.
“At contest, we’re given a prompt and have to develop an essay that’s related to that prompt,” she said. “We really have to distinguish what the prompts are talking about. To study, I read a book to expand my vocabulary.”
Sanchez has competed in ready writing before, but this will be her first trip to the state competition. She said she was surprised when she found out that she had advanced.
“I was reading the scores, and when I got up there, I thought I was fourth, but I read it wrong,” Sanchez said. “I pulled Ms. (Kacy) Richards, our English teacher, to come look, and she said that I got third. I’m proud of myself, and I was surprised that I did as well as I had.”
Ira ISD sophomore Asher Fowlkes was also surprised to find that he had advanced to the state competition in accounting.
“I was really surprised that I made it state,” he said. “Based on the district scores, I was supposed to be in fourth place.”
According to Fowlkes, preparing for the accounting exam requires a lot of studying.
“To study, we pull the district, regional and state tests all the way back to 1997, and we study and take those tests,” he said. “There’s usually about 60-80 questions both fill-in-the-blank and multiple choice.”
From Hermleigh ISD, freshman Haygen Halkowitz will compete in prose interpretation.
“I read and interpret a selection at competition,” she said. “You have to be able to have different voices and know about the story you’re reading. For instance, I’m reading a story about a boy who has Asperger’s syndrome, so I had to research Asperger’s syndrome.”
The selections Halkowitz will read at the state competition are The Prince of Tides and Counting by 7’s.
“I was amazed when I found out that I made it to state,” she said. “I never thought that would happen to me — especially being a freshman. You just don’t see freshmen make it that often. Some advice I’ve gotten is from our UIL sponsor Kelly Martin. She says to do what you do best, and go into it with a positive attitude.”
The UIL state academic meet will be held Friday and Saturday at the University of Texas at Austin.
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