The Oak Lawn Community High School Journalism placed 9th with impressive individual performances in the IHSA State Championship at the Eastern Illinois University on Friday April 29th.  The Spartans were led by Senior Fiona Agapito’s State winning Advertisement, 2nd Place in State performance by Junior Salam Mulhem in Infographic, and the 6th Place in State finish by Junior Jade Ryerson in the Headline Writing Competition.

The IHSA Journalism team is a combination of the Spartanite school newspaper and the Shield yearbook programs. The students from these two groups first compete in seventeen journalistic events at Sectionals and then the top three from each event make it to the IHSA State Finals at Eastern Illinois University

Head Coach Patrick DiFilippo said of the team, “we put up some solid performances at the Loyola University Sectional but we had several fourth and fifth place results so our team was relatively small going to state. “

Once at state, this small three-student team scored in all the events possible.  The team scored 12 points which left it only six points behind 2nd Place in State Stevenson High School in a bunched up top ten.  Coach Jamie Atkus said of the performance, they went into the state competitions really tested and we knew that they had a great chance to do really well.  We are so proud of their hard work this year. “ Coach Jessica Nickless also shared in the praise for this group.

The Journalism team will be losing some key members such as State Champion Fiona Agapito and former state qualifier Jalisa Balboa but they will have many returning members that plan on besting this year’s performance.