Photo Courtesy of CTV
BY RACHEL SHARPE
Nineteen CTV students attended the annual Student Television Network (STN) National Convention held from March 21st to March 24th in Dallas and brought home top awards in three categories.
CCHS placed first against 99 other schools in the nation in the Sweet 16 Competition, for the second time in the past four years.
“For Sweet 16, we had sixteen hours to film, edit and put together a sixteen minute news show,” junior Cody Maxham said.
In addition to putting together an entire news show in such a limited amount of time, the students had to incorporate the word “Progressive” into their stories. CTV’s Sweet 16 episode included a story about the Salvation Army, the Dallas Mavericks, and even a story about a man who dedicates his time to working with roaches, at the Cockroach Hall of Fame in Plato, Texas.
“Winning Sweet 16 was the greatest feeling ever,” senior and CTV president Tara Butler said. “As they announced second and third, I started getting scared and don’t remember all that happened, it was such a blur. When they announced our name, it was one of my happiest moments.”
The students also competed on an individual level, in various categories including public service announcements, movie trailer and more. Butler and Junior Alexis Marx won honorable mention for their event, called Spot Feature. Their story had to relate to this year’s phrase, “A Texas Tradition”. Butler and Marx had only five hours to completely film, script and edit their story.
“Our story was based on a local high school student from Texas who we met at the convention,” Marx said. “He really knew what being a Texan was all about and his love for Texas really shone through in his interview.”
Sophomore Wasim Hayatt also received honorable mention for his individual competition, the convention recap. His event required him to go around every day and shoot video of the convention and at the end compile all of his clips into a 2 minute recap of the whole week.
As this is only CCHS’s fourth year competing at the STN national convention, advisor Advisor Alfredo Pichardo said he is extremely proud of how his students did in the competition.
“We were all very excited when we won first place,” Pichardo said. “It was a great feeling.”
Next year’s STN convention will be Feb. 28 to March 1 in Los Angeles, California.
