UIL academics traveled to Texas Tech University March 12-13 for their regional competition to compete in Math, Science, Journalism, Accounting, and Literary Criticism.

13 students were eligible to compete at regionals because they placed at the district meet March 30 at Colleyville Heritage High School, unfortunately, three of those students were unable to compete at the regional meet: Sam Pierce, Corey Hevel, and Kaelyn Parker.

“It was awesome that all of them made it to regionals because our district is particularly tough we have a lot of really strong competitions, Saginaw kicked our butts in a lot of places,” UIL Journalism Coach Neil Corbett said.

During the district meet the Azle UIL team placed first in calculator team, second in journalism team overall, Mariah Hannah placed in three events, and Jacob Kautz placed in two events.

“I was excited and proud that all of my hard work paid off,” Senior Jacob Kautz said. “When I found out I got 3rd in Number Sense I was overwhelmed with joy.”

Out of the ten students who competed in regionals Kaylee Pippins will be advancing to State in Copy Editing, taking place at the University of Texas in Austin on May 3.

“Whenever I went into the room and I saw all the people that were competing it was kind of scary because there were a lot of people,” Pippins said. “There was 40-ish for 5A and 40-ish for 4A and I was a bit overwhelmed but I just hoped for the best.”

The team departed from the high school on Friday morning, arriving at Lubbock later that afternoon, and spent a whole two days in Lubbock.

“We go to spend a lot of time together and get to know each other more, and become a better team together,” Kautz said.