Students went to Liberty High School to compete in Academic University Interscholastic League (UIL), on March 28. Those who advanced in their category will go on to compete at the regional level on April 24 and 25.
“I competed in current events, which is about any recent events like politics as well as pop culture questions,” junior Chinmayee Kanumalla said. “It’s kind of like trivia knowledge about anything that’s happened in the past year.”
Kanumalla placed fifth in current events and will go to region as an alternate. Other students competed in speaking-based events, such as extemporaneous speaking, which includes creating a speech about a random topic in 30 minutes and reciting it from memory.
“[To prepare for the event] we did mock sessions every Thursday,” sophomore Rishaan Ganpath said.
Students typically get introduced to UIL events through a club or a teacher that notices their skills in a specific concept.
“I got introduced to this event (extemporaneous speaking), through the debate club,” Ganpath said. “We’re based around UIL events, and everything we do there is preparation for UIL.”
Other students who competed did their own research to decide which event they wanted to participate in.
“I competed in poetry for speech and debate,” junior Tvisha Chawla said. “I searched it up and was looking at the different UIL events, and thought, ‘Oh, poetry, I like poetry.’”
Chawla placed second in the poetry interpretation event, which involved reciting a piece of poetry, interpreting it, “putting a spin on it” and reciting it again.
“My friend really helped me prepare for it,” Chawla said. “She’s in theater, so she knows all the acting stuff, and my teacher also helped me out. They reviewed my poetry and helped me fix areas where I wasn’t able to express emotion properly.”
Chawla particularly enjoyed being around people who showed interest in the same events as her.
“It was really cool seeing all the other people there because they were really good, and I had a lot of fun just being around people who also like poetry,” Chawla said.
