Recently, Industrial teacher Lisa Bullock announced two of her students, graduate Kaylee Cooper and senior Whitney Kurtz, were selected to the All-State Journalism Staff.
The English IV, AP English, Literature and UIL journalism instructor nominated the duo due to the large number of points they accumulated over the last school year while competing in practice and final meets.
Cooper and Kurtz were the 2024-25 District Champions, Regional Champions and then placed third in the State competition. The categories included news writing, feature writing, editorial writing, copy editing and headline writing. Each student medaled in a category; Cooper snatched a silver in headline writing, while Kurtz bronzed in feature writing.
UIL journalism works a little differently, each person competes and advances individually, but it adds to an overall team score, whereas other teams compete and advance together.
To prepare for the categories, the girls took instruction from Bullock and practiced on their own. They found themselves to be each other’s strengths and always found a way to balance each other out.
“We worked as a team 100%,” Kurtz said. “Kaylee is a very strong writer in every event in journalism, especially at news and headline, whereas my strength lies in feature, and most of the time editorial, so I focused more on those. Put together, we were a force to be reckoned with.”
The team practiced every Wednesday, which consisted of reading over comments from previous contests, or reading over the journalism rule book. Bullock even pulled prompts from previous years for the duo to write practice papers for her to critique.
“It was always so easy to learn from Mrs. Bullock because of her passion for writing. Her excitement for journalism really made it easy for everyone to be excited about it,” Cooper commented. “Even when I took her AP English, which was challenging, she made it seem easier because of how enthusiastically she taught the subject. That class I learned from the most, and I think it’s made me into the writer I am today.”
Consistency is key, and Kurtz said she learned from Bullock the only way to make her a better writer was to keep writing.
“I found the judges’ comments on my previous work showed me what to keep doing, or what I needed to fix for the future,” she said.
Both girls expressed how happy they were to do so well and how proud they are to represent Industrial in such a way and bring positive attention to the school.
“I’m really happy I can end my time at Industrial receiving this honor,” Cooper said. “It’s definitely a great way to end my journalism career, and it’s a great way for Whitney to kickstart her last journalism year.”
Kurtz said this year her main goal was simply to reach state, so to be able to medal made it all the more special. “Then making the all-state staff was so surprising, but ultimately was just the icing on the cake,” she said.
Kaylee Cooper is the daughter of Rachael Baker and she has four siblings: Conner, Cohen, Dylan and Emma.
Cooper played the French horn, ran crosscountry, participated in NHS and was a member of not only the UIL journalism team, but the mathematics, computer applications, and computer science teams.
She will be attending Rice University on a fullride scholarship and major in biology on the pre-med track, plus plans on being extra involved with volunteering and research opportunities at college.
Whitney Kurtz is the daughter of Kim and Roger Kurtz, and she has a brother named Wyatt. She participates in UIL Academics, FCS, NHS, president of STUCO and plans to run track in the spring.
Kurtz shared a favorite moment during the Regional competition while writing a feature on a girl almost being swallowed by a whale while on vacation with her father.
“I remember it the best because right after, Mrs. Bullock said that something similar to that happened in real life, and I thought it was cool how the prompt creators used something from real life like that.”
Cooper shared the parts of journalism that caused her to lean into it further. “What makes it such a hard contest is the objectivity of it…it doesn’t matter how good of a paper you wrote last contest, it doesn’t matter how good of a paper you can write, all that matters is the paper you just wrote and if the judges like it that day or not,” she said. “That just made it feel so much better when I would end up doing well that day.”
Cobras at All-State
