Thursday, March 28, 2024

Newspaper Editor Wins Gold; Advances to State

Senior Peyton Proksch will advance to the state level of the University Interscholastic League (UIL) academic competition for feature writing on May 3. Proksch placed first in the regional level of competition on Saturday, April 13 at UT-Arlington, beating out competitors from eight districts around North Texas.

“I am so proud to have the opportunity to represent Dragon Media and Carroll ISD at the state meet,” Proksch said. “It can be hard to fit UIL writing in when we’re also creating a yearbook and newspaper, but I’m glad to see my hard work pay off. Last year, no one from the UIL journalism team advanced past the district round, so I was very excited to make it to regionals, and getting first place and advancing to state competition is just icing on the cake.”

Proksch first had to place in the top three in district competition to advance to regionals. In that competition, she placed in three of the journalism writing categories.

The UIL sponsors five journalism contests – copy editing, news writing, feature writing, editorial writing, and headline writing. In the hour-long feature writing contest, students are given an informational prompt and asked to write a story for the fictional “Leaguetown Press” student newspaper.

“Peyton is an incredible writer and leader and has worked diligently to create professional-level publications for CSHS during her last two years on staff,” Dragon Media adviser Natalie Brown said. “Peyton ‘practices’ for UIL every week by writing and editing articles for Dragon Media and I’m so excited the judges recognized her talent. No matter how she does in competition, she always represents our program well.”

Proksch serves as The Dragon Tribune editor in chief at Carroll Senior High and plans to attend American University in the fall where she will study Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics, and Government.

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