After a district win in March, 32 students competed in the regional meet April 13. At the Region 3 meet, held at Sam Houston University in Huntsville, the Fairfield team placed third out of about 40 schools. Senior Anna Kaye Williams and juniors Erin Rachel, Abbie Cunningham and Naydelin Espinoza, and sophomore Noe Soto will compete in the state UIL meet today in Austin.

“Everyone that advanced to the regional meet deserved to be there,” junior competitor  David Thomas said. “We all worked really hard to make Mr. Wade and the town proud of us.”

The Computer Science team placed third and the Literary Criticism team placed third, with senior Molly Allred individually placing sixth. Senior Morgan Coleman placed sixth in Prose and Poetry. In Computer Applications, Soto placed second.

“As a sophomore, second place is not too bad,” Soto said. “Since I have plenty of time to improve, who knows, maybe I’ll do well at state.”

In Copy Editing, Williams placed first and Allred placed fifth. In News Writing, Cunningham placed second. Espinoza placed third in Feature Writing, and Rachel placed third in Editorial Writing. Williams also placed sixth in Feature Writing.

“Since it was my first year competing, I was really excited and surprised when I saw I advanced to state,” Espinoza said. “I feel very accomplished going into state because I am proud of myself and the rest of the Fairfield competitors.”

This will be all of the state qualifiers’ first year to advance to state in UIL Academics.

“I have been working four years to get to this point,” Williams said. “I am so glad Mrs. Maciel strongly encouraged me to do Journalism my freshman year even though I was scared of it. This has been a great opportunity and I am blessed to finish out my UIL career on a high  note.”