Academic team makes a State-ment
Members of the academic teams hold up the awards they won in their competitions. Twenty-three members of the team won awards. Photo courtesy George Pulliam.
May 23, 2017
Every day students spend hours studying for all their classes making some of the best grades in the school. The problem is that A is the best they can do. So kids trying to show how smart they really are, are held back from their potential. Thus they compete in competitions call UIL Academic Events.
Teams from all around the district send teams full of students to compete in countless subjects to see who truly is the most knowledgeable in each subject. These events require countless hours upon hours of study in the subject just for one day of questions that are just a scrap of what you have learned in your time preparing.
Academic competitions are often considered one of the most difficult competitions in the state of Texas. It consists of five levels: two invitationals, district, region, and state. School send teams of over 60 people and are lucky to just get one past district levels. It’s extremely difficult for one single school to be successful at, and many schools don’t even have competitors with success at a district/invitational level.
“A friend at Dayton (known for being one of the strongest teams) has been over his team for 8 years and has only had one person go to state.” Says Pulliam who has been leading the academic team at K-Park for the four years we’ve had the program.
“This was one of the best teams ever and strongest in a long time. I’ve been gifted with talented juniors and seniors and our new talent is promising. We took second place in the sweepstakes, losing to an academic powerhouse, who couldn’t even get anyone to state while were able to.”
Overall K-Parks academic team has been extremely successful this year with 1 state level competitor, 11 event regional qualifiers and 15 alternates. Pulliam regards this year’s team as “phenomenal” especially the lit-criticism team who are district champs, and the speech and debate team because 3 members advanced as well as the science team which is our state chaps team.
Our team shows a lot of promise in the future however Pulliam still believes we can be even better and is looking for people with strengths in poetry, social studies but if these aren’t your strengths, anyone with an academic strength is more than welcome.
