Students participated in the Academic UIL district 19-5A meet at Memorial High School on Saturday, March 24. Cinco Ranch placed third overall in the district, scoring 242 total points. Taylor High School placed second with 265 points, and Seven Lakes High School placed first in the district with 514.5 points.

Cinco Ranch placed higher overall than four other schools in the district. Memorial High School placed fourth with 110 total points. Mayde Creek High School placed fifth with 107 points. Katy High School placed sixth with 102 points. Strake Jesuit High School placed seventh with 33 points, and Morton Ranch High School placed eighth and last with 8 points overall.

“I think it’s great that we ended up so far ahead of other schools, by hundreds of points,” junior Daniel Fernee said. “It shows what a fantastic academic program we have here at Cinco.”

In the journalism division, Cinco Ranch won first place overall. In feature writing, senior Amy Yu placed first and junior Michelle Chong placed sixth. In news writing, sophomore Victor Huerta placed second and senior Taral Patel placed fifth. In editorial writing, junior Jesse Sparks placed second and junior Trevor Nichols placed fifth. In headline writing, senior Daniela Plata placed first and junior Jesse Sparks placed third.

“I’ll admit, when I was going into this competition, I was very nervous,” junior Jesse Sparks said. “It was because for the past two years, the UIL team from our school has won the Journalism portion of the UIL meet, and I really just wanted to uphold that fantastic tradition. When we found out that we did win first place in Journalism, for the third year in a row, we all just went crazy.”

In science, Cinco Ranch placed first overall. Senior Kejia Wang placed first in science and chemistry, and senior Varun Bora placed first in physics and third in science.

In the debate and competitive speaking portions of the meet, junior Luis Espinoza placed second in Persuasive Speaking. Sophomore Travis Boyd placed sixth in poetry interpretation, and junior Jessica Lafferty placed fourth in prose interpretation.

“We did pretty well in the debate portion of the UIL meet,” junior Luis Espinoza said. “We’ve been working hard, writing cases for hours and going to tournaments almost every month this year. Our success just shows how hard we have all been working in preparation for this all year.”

In current issues and events, Cinco Ranch placed second overall, and senior Taral Patel placed first in the district. In Social Studies, senior John Dong placed first.

“I’m very proud of the Current Events team for placing second,” senior Taral Patel said. “Hopefully, if our team is the highest scoring second place team in the region, Cinco Ranch Current Events team will be the wild card team that will advance to regionals and then onto state.”

Eleven students, from the categories of journalism, Current Events, speech, social studies, and science will advance to the UIL Regionals meet druring this coming April.