By Marin Murray.

Journalism, debate and prose students competed in the Big Spring UIL Invitational Meet on Saturday, March 23 in preparation for their district meet on Saturday, April 6 at Wylie High School.

“It showed me what I need to improve on,” senior journalism student Barrett Roberson said. “And so now, I’m working really hard and plan to work really hard to, for example, memorize a bunch of AP style things so I can do better in copy editing. It just showed me what I need to improve to do better for district.”

Roberson placed first in the feature and editorial writing competitions, fourth in copy editing and fifth in news writing. Senior Marin Murray placed first in the copy editing and headline writing contests, second in feature and editorial writing and fourth in news writing.

“The thing about the competitions for journalism is that the prompts can actually be really interesting,” Roberson said. “So, writing those stories can actually be really interesting. It’s a lot more fun than I would have thought.”

Other journalism students who placed well in the journalism side of the contest were junior Teresa Lopez, who earned third in feature writing, sophomore Willoe Phillips, who placed third in headline writing and sophomore Vivian Dyer, who was sixth in feature writing. Debate and prose students also performed well at the competition.

“The best part is that you get to learn a lot about what’s going on in the world right now,” freshman Lainey Marz, who earned two perfect scores in extemporaneous speaking, said. “So, it’s a lot of fun.”

For this meet, the debate and prose students did not have the opportunity to advance to finals rounds like in previous competitions. Instead, they received ratings from their first two rounds and had the chance to compete in an extra round to continue honing their skills for Saturday.

“My favorite part is the speaking portion of it, because I’m really big into theater and was in ‘The Music Man’ earlier this year,” sophomore Syler Richardson said. “So, I love getting to act it out and be creative.”

The meet in Big Spring was Richardson’s first time competing in prose, and he hopes that he can build off of the notes he received to perform well at the district competition.