As classrooms fall silent and timers count down, students begin to write essays as others solve equations and calculate computational codes. Each UIL academics team stepped into competition, with each event testing a different kind of skill on the district level.
On March 30, the UIL Math and Computer Science teams captured district titles. The Computer Science team made history by becoming district champions for the first time with juniors Ashvith Gurram and Tanish Desari winning gold while the Math team placed second with seniors Naren Malisamy, Nathaniel Bartholomew, Priyanshu Lal and junior Advik Singh. Other academic teams, including Social Studies, Journalism, Speech and Debate and Current Events also advanced to the regional competition, which took place on April 25-26 at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
“I did not expect to win after taking the test,” Gurram said. “It was really hard, like after we opened the test, we sat there confused for five minutes, but after seeing the results, we were pretty happy. We’re pretty surprised because this was only our second year at Rouse. But we worked really hard for this and we met almost every day to practice, and I guess it paid off in the end.”
UIL Math contestants spent their time practicing for districts by having weekly afterschool meetings to take practice tests and writing down programs for their calculators. At districts, eight students competed across each math event including Number Sense, Calculator Applications and Mathematics where contestants do mental math, calculator math and take a multiple choice test.
“For the past Rouse history, we’ve really only been sending individuals to regionals, but this year, we got multiple competitors from our school in mathematics to go to regionals for the first time,” Lal said. “It felt really amazing to place at districts because in the past we’ve mostly only sent an individual to regionals but now we’re sending full teams.”
Along with advancing to regionals, the UIL Current Events and UIL Social Studies teams advanced to state. Their competition consisted of completing a multiple choice test and writing an essay on events happening in real time.
“Individually, we all studied different quizzes that our coach made as well as reading daily newsletters and articles, and then after school and during advocate we were together to take the new quizzes and discuss any news we heard,” senior Dante Alden said. “My favorite part about the process is the team meetings and discussing current events and topics that I care about.”
In Speech and Debate, sophomore Druvath Mallayagar advanced in Extemporaneous Speaking, where students are challenged to think critically with limited preparation time.
“The best thing that helped me was just practice,” Mallayagar said. “It sounds kind of generic, but putting in the hours and repeating every single little thing allowed me to get better.”
In all, 17 placed at regionals and 11 students advanced to state, winning second at sweepstakes. For seniors, this would be their last time competing with their teams.
“I loved being able to be a part of this club and watch it grow and improve and succeed,” Lal said. “Watching all the new members come in, who are going to take our places on the team, and keep the team growing and winning.”