WIMBERLEY — Led by the Informative Speaking State Champion, Joshua Bober, the Wimberley High School UIL Academic team finished fifth in the state in the 4A Academic Sweepstakes — a combination of events that includes the Academic State Meet, One Act Play, Film and state Speech/Debate events held throughout the year.

PHOTO COURTESY OF WIMBERLEY ISD
The WHS Current Issues & Events team consisted of Alexis Marinos, Joshua Bober, Alex Caldwell, Hyatt Romp and coach Bo Bowman.

In addition to Bober’s state championship, WHS also placed at the state meet held May 13-15 at UT-Austin in other events. The Current Issues & Events team of Bober, Alex Caldwell, Hyatt Romp and Alexis Marinos placed second overall and Romp was the third best individual finisher. Gage Trudeau was third in Persuasive Speaking, Sophia Vitela was fourth in Informative Speaking, and Elizabeth Gonzalez was sixth in Headline Writing.

While finishing fifth overall, WHS was also awarded the 4A State Champion Speech Team trophy by accumulating the most points in the seven speech events throughout the year. The championship effort was highlighted by Bober, Trudeau and Vitela at the UIL meet, augmented by Bober’s fifth place finish in the UIL Congress event in January and the second-place finish by Bober and partner Kathryn McKinney in the Cross Examination event in March.