As the UIL competition season starts up, students around the district are working super hard to make sure that they’ll place in their events, from journalism and reading to math and science. The students from HHS are doubling down on practicing their events, especially the mathematics team, which practices once a week.
“We practice about once a week, and I think it helps prepare us for competition days and eases us some when testing,” Kennedy Walpole, a junior who competes in mathematics, said.
Kennedy’s UIL coach, Tucker Smolik, has his teams practice once a week, and he believes that having them practice once a week will hopefully help them advance in their math events.
“Once a week at lunch time, we practice on Tuesdays, it is number sense, and Wednesday is mathematics… The more practice, the better you do… Practice makes perfect, as they say,” Tucker Smolik, the UIL coach for mathematics and number sense, said.
While his teams practice once a week, Smolik’s goal is to advance his teams either individually or as a team.
“My ultimate goal is to advance. So I’m doing number sense and mathematics, and we could advance individually or as a team,” Smolik said.
With these goals in mind, Walpole has set some goals aside for herself in hopes to place in the district.
“One goal that I’ve set for the UIL season is to place, preferably in the top 3, for our district meet coming up next month,” Walpole said.
Along with UIL being a way to help students competitiveness, it’s a way for them to work on skills that will help them in the real world.
“I chose to compete in UIL not just to compete, but to learn and grow from it. I’ve learned multiple practical skills from competing in UIL that have affected and shown in my schoolwork and academic performance,” Walpole said.
