All Frisco ISD high schools convened on campus for the District 9-5A UIL meet on Saturday, with the Redhawks academic team earning the championship.

“I think it went better than probably any year, at least in the past five years,” UIL head director Courtney Benson said. “We won Sweepstakes by almost 150 points over any of the other Frisco schools and brought home several team trophies in addition to several students placing for the regional meet.”

Having participated in UIL since he started high school, junior Lucas Barr advanced in three of five journalism events.

“I wasn’t expecting to do that well,” Barr said. “I’ve done UIL in the past two years, my freshman and sophomore year, and only advanced in one contest so I was kind of surprised. I’m kind of stressed out having those three contests back to back, but I’m just gonna do what I can and hope it goes well.”

After holding practices leading up to the meet, math teacher Jennifer Rumery takes pride in her students’ performance at the competition.

“We knew we were strong. We went to region last year, and did really well at the Prosper meet so we knew we had a good shot so we were cautiously optimistic,” Rumery said. “I feel really proud. The kids did a really good job. They work really hard to come in multiple times a week to practice. So I’m really excited for them.”

Beyond the achievement of advancing, Barr finds the experience of participating in UIL a way to incorporate the skills he learns in the classroom in a different manner.

“Doing UIL academics is definitely rewarding; since I’ve been doing it all three years I can see my growth throughout the years and how I’ve improved as a writer,” Barr said. “It’s a way to apply my skills that I learned from Wingspan ultimately it looks great to put your awards on resumes.”

Looking ahead to regionals, Benson anticipates students working hard towards the goal of making it to state.

“I would say my goal now is to have at least a couple teams or individuals go on to state,” Benson said. “We’ve got some strong teams but our region is extremely competitive and a couple of the schools within our region end up winning state and for some of the contests that they do so it’s going to be pretty tough for them but I just want them to all do their best.”

Results:

Accounting

1st place team: Liberty

1st place: Taylor Wenzel

2nd place: Krish Jariwala

3rd place: Travis Waggoner

Calculator Applications

1st place team: Liberty

1st place: Vinny Shirvaikar

2nd place: Pradyun Sangineni

3rd place: Govind Nadagopal

4th place: Andy Liu

Current Issues

2nd place team: Liberty

1st place: Samy Boutouis

6th place: Michael Yang

Computer Applications

3rd place team: Liberty

1st place: Tejas Vasudev

3rd place: Ansh Samdaria

Cross Examination Debate

3rd place team: Liberty

Copy Editing

2nd place: Lucas Barr

5th place: Aaron Boehmer

Computer Science

2nd place: Josh Nigam

3rd place: Kapil Rampalli

Editorial Writing

4th place: Lucas Barr

Feature Writing

2nd place: Kasey Harvey

3rd place: Lucas Barr

Headline Writing

5th place: Aaron Boehmer

Journalism

1st place team: Liberty

Literary Criticism

1st place team: Liberty

1st place: Elizabeth Piper

Mathematics

2nd place team: Liberty

5th place: Tom Punnen

6th place: Lisa Punnen

Number Sense

2nd place team: Liberty

3rd place: Govind Nandagopal

6th place: Pradyun Sangineni

News Writing

3rd place: Lucas Barr

Ready Writing

3rd place: Josh Nigam

Science

2nd place team: Liberty

2nd place: Billy Wang

3rd place: Kathan Gandhi

Spelling and Vocabulary

2nd place team: Liberty

3rd place: Madeline Piper