On February 25, McPherson High School took the yearbook and the newspaper staff to compete in the KSPA Regional Contest. The two staffs loaded up two suburbans with fourteen contestants and made the long trip to Hays, Kansas for our Regional Contest. Seniors Jessica Wylie, Grace Colaw, Janae McKinney, Hannah Stecklein, Bailey Holton, Abby Jantz and Olivia Hansen, juniors Sydney Mossman, Lexi Howard, Heidi Myers, Megan Wiens and Julia Eilert and freshmen Kelsey Wilson and Rylee Schrader went to Fort Hays. The regional included a series of nineteen different contests consisting of writing and drawing tests.

Once they arrived, they attended the opening session at the Fort Hays Ballroom. There they were welcomed to Hays and learned the rules of the contests. Nervously they sat and listened until it was time for the first session of contests to start. The first session had Copy Editing, Sports Writing, Editorial Cartoon, Yearbook Copy Writing, and Feature Writing. The second session started shortly after the first session ended. Second sessions included Editorial Writing, Yearbook Sports Writing, News Writing, and Cutline Writing.

“I was really nervous at first- there were so many people competing! I had never written a feature article before, so I was pretty scared going into the room to write. I’m glad I got to write in the contests that I did. I enjoyed the actual writing. After the contest, I was relieved it was over and I was eager to see the results,” Eilert said.

Online submissions were also a choice of contest. The yearbook staff had several online submissions such as Advertisements, Yearbook Layout Designs, Sports Photography and Student Life Photography. Wylie, Holton, Howard, Wilson, Mossman and Myers all submitted online entries.

“I felt pretty confident in the contests I was in because it was my third year competing in feature writing and my second year competing in news writing. I was unsure how Heidi and I were going to do in our design submission, but we worked really hard on it,” Wylie said.

Out of the fourteen students, five McPherson students qualified for state. The qualifications for state is to place in the top six of your contest. The state qualifiers are Wylie in Feature Writing and News Writing, Hansen in Copy Editing and Editorial Writing, Colaw in Copy Editing, Eilert in Feature Writing and Editorial Writing and Mossman in Yearbook Sports Writing and Student Life Photography.

“I wasn’t expecting to qualify for state because you never know what other schools are going to bring to the competition. You could place first one year and last the next, it just depends on who you are competing against. Before the contest I was really nervous because I wanted to place for state my senior year,” Wylie said.

The rest of the staff is excited for their contests to go and compete at state. State will be held at Lawrence, Kansas at the campus of University of Kansas on Saturday, May 7.