WHS students win big at state competition

Wimberley High School senior Azula Hunter-Thiam headlined WHS’s efforts at the UIL Academic State Meet with a state championship in Prose Interpretation.

Hunter-Thiam swept through the prose competitions the entire spring, winning the district, regional and state competitions. A year ago, as a junior, Hunter-Thiam won the bronze medal in the same event.

In the Prose event, competitors have two categories of pieces to perform: Category A is ‘Culture or Dreams and Aspirations’ and Category B, which is ‘This Speaks to Me.’ For her Category A piece (performed at the state preliminary round), Hunter- Thiam performed a selection based on her dream of being an actress. The selection was composed from pieces of “Yes Please” by Amy Poehler and “The Actor’s Life: A Survival Guide” by Jenna Fischer. At state finals, Azula performed her Category B piece, which was a selection of pieces from the book “Finding Me: A Memoir” by Viola Davis. The Category A piece is similar to the one used by WHS 2022 graduate Jack Garrett last spring, winning him the 4A silver medal in prose last year. The time limit for each piece is seven minutes.

Also placing at the state meet was junior Josh Bober in informative speaking and junior Jacob Mantsch in science. Bober finished in fourth place, and Mantsch was fifth overall. Mantsch also was the top scorer in the state in the chemistry portion of the science event. Also finishing in the top 10 was senior John Moore, who tied for eighth in Current Issues and Events. The WHS teams in current issues and events, science and social studies finished fourth, fifth and fifth, respectively.

When accumulating point totals from all events, WHS finished in a tie for 19th in 4A with 38 points. This includes points scored by the duo of Bober and Kathryn McKinney at the state policy (CX) debate event earlier this spring. WHS also finished fifth in the speech events team scoring standings.

The Wimberley HS UIL Academic Coordinator is Kyla Brookshier-De Leon. Below are WHS’s state meet contestants: Current Issues and Events, 4th Place Team

• 8th (tie) - John Moore

• 11th (tie) - Josh Bober

• 18th (tie) - Alex Caldwell

• 20th (tie) - Hyatt Romp Feature Writing

• Peyton Shaw Informative Speaking

• 4th - Josh Bober Poetry Interpretation • Chloe Swindle Prose Interpretation • 1st - Azula Hunter-Thiam Science - 5th Place Team

• 5th - Jacob Mantsch (top performer in Chemistry)

• 16th - Kayla Pierce

• 24th - Kaitlyn Marinos

• 29th (tie) - Tyler Youens Social Studies 5th Place Team

• 16th (tie) Chloe Thompson • 20th - Samuel Crow

• 21st - Rachel