Academic State Meet Brings in the Best

Tuesday, May 13, 2014 3:17 PM

Thousands of students compete at the Academic State Meet each year.

Photo by Jeanne Acton

The UIL State Academic Meet is set to start Monday May 19 and wrap up in the wee hours of Wednesday, May 21. Thousands of competitors and academic coaches will descend on the University for the meet.

Academic Director David Stevens said he is looking forward to the state meet because it’s his time to reconnect with coaches and students.

“The best part of state meet is getting to see some of the hardest working students and coaches display their talents and skills and be recognized for it,” Stevens said.
Stevens said coaches and competitors can expect little change in contests and procedures from last year.

“Although the schedule has some drastic changes for this year, pretty much everything else will operate as it has for many years in the past,” he said.

In the Feature Writing Contest, there is one change. Jeanne Acton, the journalism director, posted the bio sheet for the Feature Writing Contest interview on the UIL website.

“In the past, we didn’t release the identity of the interview for the contest,” Acton said. “This didn’t make a lot of sense to me. Journalists do not usually go into interviews blindly. They do as much research as possible before interviewing their subject. We wanted to give our students that opportunity — to have the most authentic experience as possible.”

Also, the Science contest will be held simultaneously in three locations with conferences A-3A testing in one room, 4A in another and 5A in the third. 

“This will allow our largest contest to be held in adequately sized rooms that can be monitored,” Stevens said. “It is also a trial as to what we may need to do with some state contests as we add a sixth conference in the 2014-15 school year.”

For the first time in history, the entire academic state meet program will contain all of the academic events, including One-Act Play.