Members from the Pius Xchange and the Pius X Thunderer competed in the 2022 Class B state journalism competition on Monday, April 25.

The competition took place at Northeast Community College in Norfolk.

As far as Xchange members went, junior Christiona Koenig placed 8th in Broadcast News Story, freshman Easton Beekman won 6th place in Newspaper Column Writing, freshman JD Stempson won a state championship in Newspaper Column Writing, and senior Jeffrey Calhoun earned a 4th place medal in Broadcast Sport Story, state runner-up in Newspaper Sports Feature Writing, and state champion in Sports News Writing.

“I think we did really, really good, but I was expecting it because everyone [on the team] is really good,” Koenig said.

As for Pius X Thunderer members, senior Izzy Owens placed 7th in News/Feature Photography, seniors Izzy Owens and Savannah Lindeen won 7th place in Yearbook Theme Development, and junior Clare Bauman won 4th place in Sports/Action Photography and state runner-up in Yearbook Feature Writing.

While some categories like Koenig’s Broadcast News Story were judged solely on the preliminary results, some medals were competed for in Norfolk.

For the competition categories, the NSAA took the top eight students in each and gave them all the same prompt and gave them an hour and fifteen minutes to write.

The students were then judged based off those stories.

“They gave us a few quotes and some background information about our topic,” Bauman said in regards to her Yearbook Feature Writing. “The story was a sophomore trip to Washington D.C. at the end of the year.”

The team as a whole finished in 8th place with a total of 136 points.