Newspaper and Yearbook made their way to Rocktown High School on Saturday, Oct 25, for the annual Virginia High School League (VHSL) conference. At this conference, students and their advisors attend workshops about publication before the award ceremony, where the past year’s results are announced.

Four yearbook students and two newspaper students, along with their advisers, met at the high school at 7:40 am before their departure.

“Yearbook and Newspaper were both really good last year, but I was anxious about the conference because there were other schools that also had good publications,” Yearbook student Warren Coles said.

Upon their arrival at the conference, the students were given pamphlets, including a list of workshops in each session. They then discussed who would go to each session to ensure they absorbed as much knowledge group as possible.

“It’s important for them to split up and go to different sessions so that they can reconvene later and share what they learned in each one of those places,” Yearbook adviser Stacy Wildman said. “There are so many different sessions and if you only have three to eight kids per staff, you have to try to divide and conquer and share when you come back together.”

During sessions two and three, a writing competition took place with many categories to compete in such as sports writing and caption writing. Yearbook student Hurley Luckeese competed in Copy Editing, while this writer competed in News writing. They submitted their papers for judgment in the competition, and the results were released during the award ceremony.

“I would say the competition went pretty good,” Lucckese said. “There was a first, second, third, and an honorable mention, and I got the honorable mention.”

At 3:00 pm, everyone gathered in the auditorium, anxious to hear the results of their previous publication year. The yearbook and newspaper were both awarded first class.

“The goal isn’t to win,” Wildman said.  ”The goal is to put out a publication that our students and faculty enjoy, and we were incredibly successful with that.