HARLINGEN — She’s a good listener.
Every time Jocelyn De Leon was asked a question about hummingbirds, she had a ready answer. That’s because Jocelyn, 13, had listened carefully to the passage for the “listening kills,” event during the UIL District Meet earlier this month.
“I’m pretty good at memorizing things and paying attention to details,” said Jocelyn, a seventh grader at Vernon Middle School.
Jocelyn and several dozen other students from three school districts competed in both testing and speaking events for UIL. The competition took place over several days to accommodate COVID restrictions, which necessitated the entire contest to take place remotely.
“The way it’s structured is that, given the pandemic, every school hosted its own UIL event and sent the result that’s hosting which is Coakley Middle School,” said Manuel Garcia, UIL coordinator.
Garcia, who is also the speech and drama teacher at Vernon, said 11 schools from Harlingen, San Benito and Los Fresnos participated in the event.
“They each had to create their own schedule,” he said. “They had like a week window. The way I scheduled, I had two or three events per day. That gave me plenty of time to follow through with the logistics so the kids would be ready for the competition.”
The skit, “Answering 911 Life in the Hot Seat,” gave Elina Kretz the chance to exercise her skills in the “Duet Acting” event.
“I really liked the script that we did because it was pretty dramatic,” said Elina, 12, a sixth grader. “It was about a 911 operator and a victim, whoever’s calling 911. Through the script they would switch places.”
Elina’s performance so impressed judges she took first place. She also placed third in “modern oratory” and that event did present significant challenges. She had to select a topic, write a speech, and then present it.
“I had never written a speech for UIL before, so it took a lot out of me,” she said.
And the speech?
“The question was, ‘Is the world handling the global pandemic successfully?’” she said. “I said that they aren’t because most restaurants are still open and unnecessary places are open.”
Sixth-grader Tyana Cardenas took on the challenge of competing in as many events as possible: number sense, calculator, mathematics, social studies, maps graphs and charts, modern oratory and prose — whew!
“I just wanted to try out some new things,” she said.
And that she did.
They aren’t slowing down. The students are now practicing their Scottish accents for the one-act play, “The Women of Lockerbie.”
