By Ana Calderon |
Last month at Churchill the academic UIL team had their first competition. Roosevelt students competed against other schools across the city in 16 different subject areas.
In the UIL competition, James Daley placed seventh in Current Events and issues, Marcus Caldera placed 10th in Calculator (Veteran Category), Saffron Kaplan placed ninth in Math, Israel Perez placed fifth in Computer Applications, Cameron Sapp placed third in Computer Science. In science, sophomore Michelle Vo placed 10th among freshmen and sophomores and Rebecca Mangold ninth among juniors and seniors, and also held the top biology score in the entire meet.
Mangold works hard every day to prepare to compete.
“I’m in AP Biology so that has helped me prepare a lot,” Mangold said. “One of the difficulties there is it’s that you never know what to expect on the test because they can really ask you anything.”
The test has questions in biology, chemistry and physics.
“I’m really excited this year about our UIL squad,” science coach Cynthia McKinney said. “I have a lot of dedicated students. I have some new ones who’ve been working really hard and they did amazing at their first tournament.”
Mangold balances her time on academics with her time as a competitive runner.
“Academics is first with us, even before we start talking about running, track and field, cross country whatever it may be,” track coach Corey Bedell said. “Becky is one of the ones that is an exception to the roof.”
“Becky Mangold just did awesome,” McKinney said. “She’s showing off her three years of hard work and she got top biology beating a lot of top-notch private schools as well so I’m really excited for her.”
There are academic UIL competitions in math, science, computers, social studies, English, journalism, current events, and more.
UIL contestants meet weekly with their teams to study for their competitions. Their next competition will be at Reagan High School.
