The UIL Academics teams are gearing up to compete at UIL district Saturday. Most of the Azle UIL academic teams have gone to four invitational meets in preparation for this meet and have had plenty of members qualify for regionals and state over the years.

“I believe that we’ll have several students advance to the regional contest.” UIL Coordinator and Math and Science sponsor Shayna Reasoner said. “I think we will perform very well in several categories. It should be a great turnout.”

Currently, the Azle UIL Academics comprises of four teams— Journalism, Math and Science, English and Debate, which all have a various number of events for student competitors. These teams each consist of competitions such as number sense, copy editing, ready writing, and Lincoln-Douglas (LD) debate and many more.

“I went to state in LD my sophomore year,” senior Diana Garcia said. “I like seeing all the different point of views that everyone has in debate because I think it’s interesting to think of something in a way I’ve never thought of.”

UIL has several devoted sponsors that help competitors to place and do well in their events. Math and science is sponsored by Reasoner, Journalism is taught by Neil Corbett, Debate is coached by Megan House and English is advised by Sarah Milosh and Emily Kunkel.

“This will be my fifth year teaching debate,” House said. “My favorite part of debate is getting to see people be forced to think about both sides of an argument.”

This year, the UIL Journalism roster has featured sophomore Sam Schroeder and freshman Lily Hudman, who’ve won awards at invitational meets in several of their events.

“For district, I’m competing in editorial, news writing and headline,” Schroeder said. “I just like trying to see what I can do with the prompt and how I can work it out.”

Competitors practice with their respective teams, but at invitational and district meets they come together and get to socialize with the other academics.

“The best part of UIL is being able to hang out and meet new people,” sophomore Nova Wang said. “I also like that people can possibly win through competitions and place in different areas.”