Congratulations to the High School team of Marlee Bieniek, Alexandria Claypoole, Kelsey Dineff, Hailey Soxman and Zoey White who earned Super Winner status at the most recent English Festival!

Each team was prompted to read six books for a series of competitions against teams from other schools. Teams competed in the following categories: Trivia, Talk Show, Insights and Super Trivia.

"We were going up some teams that are mostly seniors, and they've been doing this most of their lives," Kelsey said. "Some of them are teams from private schools, too, and for us to go in there as five freshmen and represent Deer Lakes with a win in every single category, it feels pretty good."

Several of the team's members experienced the English Festival in Middle School but knew they would have to prepare with greater detail in high school.

"It's definitely going to be harder as a freshman just for the very fact that you are going up against twelfth grade students who have done this competition for several years in high school," Alexandria said. "That really makes a difference whereas in middle school everyone is closer in terms of grade level and experience."

"The books are definitely more complex, so there's more to dive into as a reader," Kelsey added. "And, yeah, it's not easy going up against some teams. We are really close friends, though, and that gave us an advantage over some of those other teams that might be as close knit. We knew we would work well together."

They looked to each other to settle into the competition.

"Once you get past the beginning and you see your teammates getting into it, you're fine," Alexandria said. "Even if another team answers a really hard question, everything comes back to you when your own team starts to do well."

The winning effort felt like vindication for the team.

"We had some really good runs the last two years we were in Middle School, and last year I felt we should have won but didn't," Kelsey said. "It was really great to feel like we had a little bit of a redemption arc."