Yearbook Journalism wins SPC for third year in a row

Senior Emma Guarni competes in the Yearbook Theme Development Event at the February 26th SPC Journalism Competition. “[Caley and I] are really good at combining thoughts and bouncing ideas off of one another to make sure we are producing the best work possible,” Guarni said. Photo courtesy of Palmer Calvey.

Competing against eight schools, East journalism students won the Southwest Prairie Conference on February 26th.

For the yearbook journalism team, the competition involved competing in events like Copywriting, Infographics, Newspaper Design, and Video News.

Since the team was coming into the competition with a two-year winning streak, senior Dani Arenas said that she felt a lot of pressure during the competition.

“I felt confident, but a little nervous, because it was only my second year on staff and my first year was online during the pandemic,” Arenas said.

Despite Arenas’ nerves, she placed first in Double Page Layout Design and fourth in Infographics.

Leading up to the competition, the team said that they prepared extensively. Senior Emma Guarni prepared for the Theme Development event — which requires students to develop a given theme — by finding inspiration online.

“My partner [Caley Layman] and I made Pinterest boards to come up with visual and graphic ideas that we liked,” Guarni said. “We also looked at previous winners of the competition in order to understand exactly what the judges will be looking for.”

Guarni’s hard work preparing paid off as she placed fourth in the Theme Development event.

Since the competition was held at East, Arenas said that it took off some of the stress and uncertainty.

“I felt relieved that it was at our school because I knew our computers well and how everything, like the software, was going to run,” Arenas added.

During the competition, senior Elizabeth Le who competed in Newspaper Design and Yearbook Copywriting, said that finishing on time was a major struggle.

“I struggled with timing the most. I did not realize that the hour and a half would go by so fast so I used up all my time and panicked when there were only 10 minutes left,” Le said.

Senior Estelle Moran, who placed third in Video News, also said that she felt stressed with the time limit, especially with writing the video script.

“As a group, we struggled most with the script of our video because we had to draft out our ideas,” Moran said. “But then, on the spot, we had to come up with what each person would say during their interview which was overwhelming.”

After the competition, Yearbook Journalism teacher Colleen Calvey said that she felt happy about the team’s success.

“I am really excited that we won. It is always a little close because Minooka and Plainfield have really strong teams but I am really proud of us,” Calvey said.

Le also said that she was excited about the win and that the team’s encouraging environment was an important component leading to their success.

“Everyone was supportive and it gave our team a lot of hope that we would place in our categories,” Le added.