After qualifying at the regional level, Northwood’s Quill team traveled to Northwest Guilford High School in Greensboro on Dec. 1 where they took first place at the Quill state championships.
“Last year our team did not make it to states so actually being able to go with a team was very exciting for our school this year,” senior Riley Shaner said.
Quill is a North Carolina Association for Scholastic Activities (NCASA) writing competition in which teams of four students are given 90 minutes to respond to an on-demand writing prompt in one of four categories: literary analysis, problem solution, argumentation and creative writing.
“Overall, it was really cool to interact with other people in a competition like Quill,” senior Ethan Cove said. “I am from out of state so anytime I get to go outside of Chatham County and explore North Carolina is always a good experience.”
Cove is a first-year member of Quill and he competed in the problem solution event.
“Going into the competition, I was pretty confident in my ability to write a solid paper that solved an issue because that’s what I like to do, problem solve.”
This year the team was coached by English teacher Sabrina Harlan and she feels that her competitors were well prepared for the competition.
“We practiced, just like you would practice with an athletic team,” Harlan said. “I went over the rubrics with the students and we talked about their categories. Part of our strategy was to select the best writers in those categories to compete.”
Shaner, the team’s most experienced competitor, felt that competing in regionals was instrumental to their success.
“Regionals was really good in helping us prepare for states because you could get used to the time limit and experience how the competition worked,” Shaner said. “Because I had done this competition before, I was not as nervous going in.”
Former coach Kathleen Greenlee served as a proctor in this year’s competition and was proud to see the team represent the school.
“I am really proud that they made it to states again because we had held the championship for 3 years in a row and the last couple years we did ok but didn’t win the championship,” Greenlee said. “I hope they can continue bringing home the championship but also that they put their effort forward.”
