Hawaii Baptist Academy wins top journalism award for fifth straight year

Hawaii Baptist Academy students leaped out of their seats Wednesday as they took the top prize at the Hawaii High School Journalism Awards for the fifth consecutive year.

Fourteen students from the academy attended the awards ceremony, which was held at the Pagoda Hotel, and couldn’t contain their excitement.

Eunice Sim, faculty adviser for the academy’s newspaper, Eagle Eye, said winning still comes as a surprise.

“It’s very surprising because every year you see more and more great work from students from all the different schools,” Sim said.

Eagle Eye is part of an elective course Sim has been teaching at the academy for seven years.

“Students graduate and new students come in,” Sim said. “So for a lot of them, this is their first time. Majority of them were not here least year. So even though we might have a string of wins, from a lot of their perspectives, this is the first time.”

Kristin Lau, a senior and the editor-in-chief for the academy’s news outlet, said she was in shock when her school’s name was called as the best in the state winner.

“Everyone was ecstatic,” the 18-year-old said. “I’m just so proud of what we’ve done.”

She added that the entire team put in a lot of extra hours outside of their class time working on articles and multimedia pieces.

“Each one of our team members is so creative and innovative to come up with new ideas,” said Lau, who said those contributions helped the school win. “It’s really inspiring to be surrounded by so many people who are so creative and hard-working.”

Despite having her eyes set on a future career in business rather than journalism, she said she learned many skills that she can use later.

“The newspaper has been a totally transformative experience for me,” Lau said. “I’ve become a better writer, a better communicator.”

Freshman Zadie Young, 15, who won the Most Valuable Staffer award for Hawaii Baptist Academy, called the experience “surreal.”

“I wasn’t really expecting it at all,” Young said. “I just took this class for fun, but it’s been more than that.”

Young, who writes feature articles and blog posts for the Eagle Eye, added that the team has become like a family.

Although Young wants to pursue a career in the medical field after high school, she plans on sticking with the news outlet until she graduates.

This year, six private schools and eight public schools competed in 19 categories, including writing, photography, comic strip, blog, social media, info-graphic, video and layout/design.

Private and public schools were judged separately to determine the top three winners for each specific category. Then, judges awarded the overall winner for each category. Three schools were then chosen to have the best journalism program overall.

Sacred Hearts Academy and Mililani High School took second and third place, respectively, for the overall best in the state award.

Sponsors for the awards included the Hawaii Publishers Association, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, MidWeek, Honolulu Publishing, Nella Media Group and Honolulu Civil Beat.