Gear Up for the Academic Race and the Changes Ahead
By Dr. David Stevens, Academic Director | Tuesday, December 10, 2013 9:40 AM
On your marks. Get set. Go.
The bustle of the holiday season, the anticipation of a long holiday break and the spring meet competition season are upon us. They always arrive quicker than anticipated. Below are some details to help prepare for this race and upcoming changes that are being considered.
Enjoy the taper. This is the decreased running before a race that allows your body to recuperate, rebuild and be fresh for race day. The holiday break is a perfect time for that. Non-stop training and full preparations will soon begin.
Get the gear. Study materials and resources are as essential as shoes and clothing choices for runners. UIL has a various assortment of previous year’s tests, study guides and resources available through the website.
New this year is the ability to immediately download electronic versions of many of our resources for half of the price of the printed material. These resources, along with previous year’s tests, are expected to continue to increase.
Fuel up. Your nutrition for this race is the academic coaches and contestants for each event. Identify coaches early for each event. If they have not already started, encourage them to be recruiting students and holding practice sessions.
Know the route. Be familiar with the trail and the terrain of the run. Make sure that academic coaches and potential competitors understand the conflict pattern, which can be found on the UIL website and in the Academic Coordinator’s Manual. This pattern lets students know in advance what contests will conflict at the regional and state levels of competition and helps them make choices about how to spend their time and energy.
Students deserve to know, for instance, that Literary Criticism and Spelling & Vocabulary conflict before they spend hours learning the words or reading the selected literature. While the conflict pattern is not mandated, but highly encouraged at the district level, it will be followed at the regional and state meets.
Look for future suggested routes of the race. So, on that note, the UIL academic staff has been reviewing the current conflict pattern. An obvious problem is Lit Crit and Spelling, which are both language arts contests. Some students are interested in participating in both events. If we pull Literary Criticism out of the third session in the conflict pattern and place it in session four that would resolve the conflict. It could potentially lengthen the contest day a bit, but the benefit may outweigh the time increase. Let us hear your thoughts.
Now let's get back to the race.
Enjoy the expo. Some races have race expos with vendors and free samples. You may have already missed the Dec. 10 deadline for ordering UIL Set A materials to host an invitational meet, but you have until Jan. 10 to order Set B materials if you are hosting a meet.
Train. Not every school will host a meet, of course, but you should make every attempt to see that students on your campus have a chance to compete in at least one before the district meet. You never run a race without a trial run. You want students in district competition to be able to focus on the contest itself and be able to give their very best effort. They cannot do that if they do not know the contest procedures and what to expect, nor can they judge their use of time if they haven’t taken an actual test, written from a designated prompt or performed before a neutral judge within the same time limits designated for each contest.
Check the UIL website for a list of invitational meets, and contact others in your area for information about tournaments that may not have been submitted to the UIL office. Make sure you know what contest materials are being used, either set A, set B or a third-party vendor, so that students do not attend more than one meet using the same test materials.
Stretch so you can arrive to the starting line relaxed and ready. Coordinators and coaches need to work with other staff and administration to be aware of potential scheduling conflicts with other events or activities. If potential competitors know well in advance the date or dates of academic meets, they can review their schedules for family events and other activities and make choices about what they want to do.
Get your best rest the night prior to the race. You will be back in the classroom in January. Here’s wishing you the very best in the upcoming UIL academic season. We will hit the ground running with Congress State Meet, CX Debate district competitions and Invitational A meets starting in early January, followed more quickly than you would think possible by all the other academic spring meet events.