On Thursday, Feb. 23, 18 staff members from both the newspaper and yearbook staffs traveled to Kansas State University to compete in the Kansas Scholastic Press Association regional competition.

Sarah speaking:

The regional journalism competition is essentially like any team’s regional competition. Generally, experienced staff members either submit pieces, like designs or headlines they have written in advance, or travel to the regional competition to participate in an on-site competition. Hundreds of student journalists from across the state meet at six different locations to compete. This year, our staff traveled to K-State to compete against other 5A and 6A schools meeting there. Typically, our school has traveled to the University of Kansas, but the change in scenery was nice. I believe our journalism staff had entries in every competition category from, news writing and headline writing, which I competed in, to cartoon drawing and sports writing. Although our staffs are primarily at the competition to, well, compete, plenty of fun is had at the competitions. Memories from KU competitions include bowling on-site and a time we tried to but wasabi on a&e editor Austin Gillespie’s pizza (Which I ruined by pointing out there was wasabi on his pizza … ). This year’s highlights (at least for me) included yearbook people section editor Allie Love creeping on a K-State basketball player and watching adviser Kathy Habiger (a die hard KU fan) try to convince herself to go to the K-State book store. Overall, the competition location felt different but the experience was just as great. One negative about the competition this year, however, is that results will not be announced until Friday, March 9. Typically, results are posted the day of the competition. I guess we will all just be waiting in suspense.

Jill speaking:

As a future K-State attendee, I really enjoyed getting to go to Manhattan for the regional competition. It was fun to get to compete in a different atmosphere after being at KU every year before this. This is my third year competing in regionals and I believe this year our journalism program put forward some really great stuff (you know your fellow journalism students are awesome when the entire seminar gets involved in an argument over which of yearbook staff member Austin Becker’s pictures are better to send in). I hope we end up with great results this year and I think there is enough talent on both staffs to do just that. It is unfortunate, as Sarah said, that it will take so long to get our results back in, but suspense just makes it more exciting. I definitely missed KU for regionals though, as I am so used to it from the last two years. This was made especially hard because seniors from last year that are majoring in journalism this year were running the KU event, so it would have been nice to see them. Either way, I wish everyone on both staffs good luck as we wait for our results, and I think everyone did a great job.

Lesson of the week:

1. Competing and getting to show our journalism program’s awesomeness is an exciting annual event we can always look forward to.

Lesson 25 of being an editor-in-chief: Check.