OLCHS Journalism Team Headed TO IHSA Finals

OAK LAWN, IL — The Oak Lawn Community High School journalism team, which includes the Spartanite student newspaper, yearbook and broadcast team, is headed to the Illinois High School Association state finals this weekend.

The team struck gold at the IHSA sectional meet April 11, competing in areas ranging from copy writing and yearbook layout to photo story. After the dust settled and a week after the competition took place, the IHSA released the scores on Friday in a live virtual awards ceremony. The result was that OLCHS had eight individual sectional champions, and students qualified for the IHSA State meet in 15 of the18 events. The Spartans eventually won the sectional championship with a total of 80 points and defeating schools such as Homewood-Flossmoor, Hinsdale South, Marist, and Reavis.

Sectional champions for Oak Lawn included Sofia Serna in Broadcast News, Maggie Hennessy in Copy Editing, Elliot Flores in Editorial Cartoon, Yusra Abdelrahman in Editorial Writing, James Walsh in Feature Writing, Sarah Lindsay in Info Graphics, in Omar Alqazaq, Iman Khater, and Hiba Ouarerhni in Video News, and Arvin Wallack in Yearbook Layout Double-Page Spread.

The Top 3 finishers in each event qualified for the state meet, which will take place virtually this Saturday. Flores also qualified for state in Advertising with a third-place finish. David Romero qualified with a second-place finish in Newspaper Design and a third-place finish in Yearbook Copy Writing. Adriana Hall advanced to state with a second-place finish in Photo Story Telling. Fares Marzouk took home second place in Sports Writing. Randa Qatanani finished second in Yearbook Caption Writing to move on to state. And Ashley Argueta and Owen Dziemiela finished third in Yearbook Theme Development.

By advancing in so many events, the Spartans have high hopes for a strong finish at the IHSA State meet this Saturday. The Journalism team sponsors are Pat DiFilippo, Jessica Nickless, and Brian Frangella.

~ Contributed by Brian Frangella, OLCHS Staff Writer