On October 8th, the HHS literature arts team hosted their first home meet, which consisted of 8 other teams attending and over 50 students participating. The HHS team is led by English teacher Mrs. Susan Hall, and the team members this year include: Beverly Wagner, Julia McTaggart, Jennifer DeBrot, Cole Riegler, Alex Rieger, and Reagan Case. For those who lack a better understanding of the fundamentals, “The teams all meet at the host school. The event organizer goes over the rules for the night. Teams turn in their cell phones to their coach. They are given a packet with the night’s prompt and paper for submissions. They then go into a classroom with only a dictionary and thesaurus. They have two hours to create, edit, and submit their best work,” Mrs. Hall explained. She also explained what preparations they take before competitions, saying, “We always do a writing warm-up where we just get our creative energy flowing. Then, we discuss the next competition’s prompt. We talk about how to approach it. We discuss a team strategy. Then we do a few short practice rounds with a similar prompt.”
Although the West Michigan Conference has been running competitions for several years, HHS decided to join three years ago in hopes of promoting activities for students other than sports-related extracurriculars. When asking returning senior Beverly Wagner if she has any vivid memories during her time being on the team, she mentioned, “Last year, I believe on October 4th, our first competition, after we turned in our essays, we headed out to the school van. However, we accidentally went to the wrong van and one of us, I can't recall who, opened the door of a STRANGER’S van! It was hilarious. It was because we forgot the color of the van and thought the van was black when it was actually red.” Beverly also mentioned why she wanted to join the team, emphasizing, “My love for writing. I also wanted to work on my writing skills for quite a few years, and the literature arts team seemed like an amazing opportunity to improve my writing and brainstorming skills.” The team will continue to obtain humorous memories and abundant opportunities that will allow them to prosper to victory during their final meets in November and December.
