Plains High School Academic Team Places 3rd out of 20 Area 1A-5A Schools
by Brad Friesen
Only Andrews High School and Frenship High School kept ahead of the 20 Plains High School Students who attended the academic meet in Andrews. Bigger schools like Lubbock High, Permian San Angelo Lake View and Greenwood could not keep pace, but made the challenge even greater. Part of our speaking team Kasidee Taylor, Justin Esch, Rebecca Garcia, Jasmine Rivera, and Vanessa Andazola debuted this weekend with excellent results.
What is amazing to me is that several of these students either played a tough basketball game or worked in the concession stand the night before and then got up to leave at 6:15 in the morning to compete at Andrews.
There were no team awards given at this meet, but using UIL rules, our Social studies team of Jaston Brink, Greg Andazola, and Brock McWhirter placed 2nd behind Andrews and the calculator team of Denise Tarango, Autumn Friesen, and Alyx Henderson would have placed 3rd behind Lubbock High and Permian.
Placing individually at this meet was very difficult in the math/science events since the larger schools typically bring 20-30 students in each of these events. Out of over 100 students, Denise placed 2nd in Calculator and 7th in Number Sense and Mathematics.
Individual Results:
| Calculator | Number Sense |
| Denise Tarango 2nd overall 2nd senior | Denise Tarango 7th overall 4th senior |
| Autumn Friesen 2nd Junior | Autumn Friesen 10th Junior |
| Alyx Henderson 2nd Freshman | |
| Current Events | |
| Poetry | Brock McWhirter 4th overall |
| Kassidee Taylor 2nd overall | |
| Editorial Writing | |
| Headline Writing | Adriana Corrales 5th overall |
| Carolina Hernandez 3rd overall | |
| Adriana Corrales 4th overall | Mathematics |
| Denise Tarango 4th senior | |
| Social Studies | Autumn Friesen 4th junior |
| Jaston Brink 3rd overall | Alyx Henderson 6th freshman |
| Greg Andazola 7th overall | |
| Spelling & Vocabulary | |
| Feature Writing | Brooke Wilson - 2nd overall |
| Carolina Hernandez 3rd overall | |
| Taylor Michaelson 6rh overall | Persuasive Speaking |
| Justin Esch 5th overall | |
| News Writing | |
| Taylor Michaelson 3rd overall | Science |
| Adriana Corrales 5th overall | Greg Andazola |
| Austin Taylor | |
| Informative Speaking | Griffin Young |
| Rebecca Garcia 5th overall | Darryl Cox |
| Alex Rodriguez | |
| Brock McWhirter |
