One competitor stepped onto the stage with a carefully crafted interpretation about finding joy and leadership. Four others sat down with calculators and accounting principles on their minds.
Though their events looked very different, Tioga High School’s State UIL qualifiers shared the same destination this spring: the state’s biggest academic stage.
This spring, Graci Whiseant advanced to the UIL State Academic Meet in prose interpretation after placing first at District and second at Regionals. Meanwhile, Tioga’s accounting team of Chloe Moore, Ayden Rhymes, Ricky Hartman and Koli Goree captured first-place team titles at both district and Regional competition before finishing fourth in the State.
Though their events could not have been more different, both shared a common theme: dedication.
Whiseant’s path to State began with two pieces she had already spent a year refining.
Her first selection focused on finding joy in everyday moments.
“So my first piece, which was my A piece, was about finding joy in the little things,” Whiseant said. “Throughout my whole piece, I kind of just talked about how we need to find the joy in the small moments and the little things.”
Her second piece tackled a very different topic.
“My B piece that I did was about having a woman president,” she said. “Just having a woman president and what that could look like for the United States.”
Although she had used both selections the previous year, Whiseant said preparation remained an ongoing process.
“I was very familiar with them, but really just taking time during our UIL class period and reading them over and over,” she said. “We had a couple people come in and clinic us and critique us, and we would take those critiques and implement them into our pieces to make them even better than they already were.”
She said the topics themselves were what initially drew her to the selections.
“I chose them because I feel like they’re really important pieces,” Whiseant said. “Especially the president one, because we obviously don’t have one. We had the option to have a woman president last year and we didn’t. I just think they’re really important topics that need to be talked about.”
After earning first place at District and second place at Regionals, she secured a trip to Austin for the State meet.
“I was just overjoyed,” Whiseant said. “It felt very surreal. I was like, ‘Wait, is this actually real? Did I actually place first and second? Like, what?’”
The moment she learned she was state-bound was equally memorable.
“I was just super, super happy, overjoyed,” she said.
The announcement came after an especially long wait for results.
“It took very, very long, like three hours to wait for results,” Whiseant said. “So my nerves had calmed down a little bit by then.”
By the time State competition arrived, Whiseant had developed a routine.
While waiting for her turn to perform, she focused on repetition and preparation.
“Every time someone would go, I would just repeat my intro, because our intros have to be memorized,” she said. “And the morning of the contest, I would just read both of my pieces one more time to make sure I really got them down.”
The State experience itself was packed into multiple days.
Whiseant recalled attending another student’s award ceremony before heading to the roll-call room, where competitors learned which piece they would perform during preliminaries.
After that, it was time to wait.
“I went and found my room and waited outside until all the judges were ready,” she said.
Even with months of preparation, nerves still crept in.
“I was nervous leading up as each person was going because I went last,” Whiseant said. “I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to be the one closing in the room. I have to do a good job.’”
Still, she left the room feeling proud of her performance.
“I think I did really good,” she said. “I think that was probably one of my best times doing my piece.”
Beyond competition results, Whiseant said UIL helped widen her perspective.
“It really broadened my eyes,” she said. “Each person had different topics or different things they talked about. It helped me see things in a different way.”
She also gained skills that will extend beyond high school.
“It helped me make new friends and just learn how to be professional and learn how to speak in a professional setting,” she said.
Looking back, some of her favorite memories happened outside the competition room.
“My favorite memory is staying in the hotel at State,” Whiseant said. “With my friends, we were just there chilling, hanging out, having a good time. It was really fun.”
While Whiseant was preparing speeches and interpretations, Tioga’s accounting team was spending hours studying financial concepts and solving practice problems.
The team entered the season with a mix of experience and youth. Moore, a senior, returned after qualifying for state the previous year. Rhymes, a junior, joined freshmen Hartman and Goree to form a team that quickly found success.
“A lot of the time we just kind of practice with tests from previous years,”Moore said. “We look at what concepts get repeated, what shows up the most.”
The students also worked through practice packets provided online by the UIL accounting test writer.
Competition days often began hours before the actual contest.
“Our competitions are usually around 11,” Moore said. “We have to get to wherever the competition is a couple hours early, and we’ll spend that morning practicing, doing practice tests or practice problems.”
That final review often made a difference.
“I think that’s really what helps us the most, is the last-minute type of studying,” Moore said.
The team said they helped each other learn difficult concepts throughout the year.
“If I was struggling on a problem, Ayden would a lot of times assist me with it,” Goree said. “It actually helped me learn a lot better when I had a teammate help me.”
The collaboration proved its worth.
Tioga captured first-place team finishes at both District and Regional competition, earning a trip to State.
For some competitors, the achievement was unexpected.
“Personally, as a freshman, when you learn you’re going to State in something that you learned the year of,” Goree said, “you feel a lot of overwhelming emotions that kind of leave you speechless.”
For Moore, the State qualification carried special significance.
“I was going to be kind of disappointed if I didn’t get to go to State just because I went last year,” Moore said. “It was really cool to get to go with the team this year.”
She said qualifying validated the effort the team invested throughout the season.
“It’s really easy to second-guess yourself,” Moore said. “Even though we practice so much, there’s only so much you can do since we don’t have accounting classes necessarily. It’s just kind of validating to know that even though we don’t have the accounting class, we still got there.”
At the State meet, Tioga proved it belonged among Texas’ top accounting programs.
Moore placed 13th individually, followed closely by Hartman in 15th, Rhymes in 16th and Goree in 17th. Together, they earned fourth place as a team.
Moore said the results exceeded some of her expectations.
“It was really nice to know that my score was a lot higher than I had expected,” she said.
For the younger competitors, State also provided motivation for the future.
“I think I’m speaking for all of us that we still want to get first place team,” Rhymes said. “And we all just want to beat our scores from this past year at State and maybe even get top three.”
Whether standing before judges in a prose interpretation room or solving accounting problems under pressure, Tioga’s State qualifiers came away with more than rankings.
“I think just that if you spend more time with something, you’re bound to learn from it, even in ways you don’t necessarily realize,” Moore said.
For Whiseant, the experience offered a broader understanding of the world and confidence in her abilities.
For the accounting team, it demonstrated what can happen when students commit themselves to a common goal.
Together, their accomplishments helped showcase Tioga’s academic talent on one of the biggest stages UIL has to offer and left a foundation for future competitors to build upon.
