This year, on Wednesday, February 23, HS Publications staff and Sports Reporting class along with Mr. Cure and Mrs. Dorris went to SIU for competitions and conferences. This is a yearly event that a number of area schools attend to brush up on their skills journalist skills and to attend sessions related to topics within the publications sector. 

The day opened with a guest speaker named Cindi Andrews who came and talked about journalism. She explained what journalism is and the benefits of having it as your career. Cindi also talked about how she had made her own website and how things were going with that. She also explained that making a website is not that hard to do. She also said if many of the students here chose this as their career path all would be the next generation to have the opportunity to “keep it alive.” 

From there students either attended development sessions or completed in local contests. Some of the students participated in the following contests, caption writing, yearbook theme development, yearbook feature writing, and editorial cartooning. After the competition started everyone received 60-120 minutes to complete their contest. Once the competition was done many of the students went to head to lunch.

Junior Kayce Glenn commented about her thoughts and feelings about the contest by saying, “I was really anxious going into the competition and it ended up being really fun. 

Junior Fallon Carney replied, “I was very excited to go back in person for our conference this year! At first, I was super nervous but when I got there and got my assignment I ended up having a great time. I took pictures around campus for my topic as well and lastly, I enjoyed getting to spend time outside of school with all of my yearbook friends.”

 Lastly, after lunch was all finished, students headed to the auditorium for the speakers to announce the contest winners in each topic. Carterville students placed in the following categories:

• Senior Eire Armstrong: 1st place, Editorial Cartooning
• Freshman Hailey Bolen: 2nd place, Caption Writing
• Senior Madeline Liss: 2nd place, Yearbook Feature Writing
• Junior Kayce Glenn: 2nd place, Best Story Contest (online)
• Seniors Paige Meyer and Macey Lentz:  3rd place, Student Life Spread (online)
• Sophomore Dani Scott: 3rd place, Sports Reporting
• Sophomore Jada Outland:3rd place, Best Website Sports (online)
• Sophomore Kennedy Rushing: 3rd place, Best Website Sports Feature (online)
• Juniors Paige Mausey and Kayce Glenn: 3rd place, Theme Development (in person)
• Juniors Fallon Carney, Kayce Glenn, Paige Mausey, and Senior Madeline Liss: 3rd place, Theme Development (online)

Junior Paige Mausey said, ” This was my second year competing with Kayce in a theme development competition. Getting third place was better than getting fourth place last time! I hope we can place even higher in the fourth coming yearbook theme and development competition” about her contest.

Senior Eire Armstrong replied with ” I was really confused about winning first place in Editorial Cartooning but then again I was really glad to know that I did good enough to get first place.” 

Overall, all of our Sports Reporting and Yearbook Publications staff had a great day at SIU. Most of cannot wait until next year to come back in compete in the same or a different category.