Sabine ISD has claimed a “three-peat” when it comes to academic excellence. Sabine High School students this past week were celebrated for earning first place in the 3A State Academic Championship for the third year in a row. (Lucas Strough/Kilgore News Herald Photo)

Sabine ISD has claimed a “three-peat” when it comes to academic excellence. Sabine High School students this past week were celebrated for earning first place in the 3A State Academic Championship for the third year in a row.

Students competed in a variety of UIL academic events, including debate, student congress, essay, computer applications, journalism, theater arts, language applications, STEM and more.

“To me, the mark of this school is two things that I definitely see here: a proud past and a promising future,” Sabine High School coach Keith Taylor told an assembly of students, faculty and staff gathered in the school’s auditorium.

Taylor, in addition to coaching athletes, also serves as one of the high school UIL academic coaches.

“I’ll tell you, the UIL kids that will be back here next year, you have a promising future. Those of you that are leaving, you have a promising future. Our kids that go to UIL are just tearing it up at college and being very successful,” he said. “I don’t know how much y’all now about this but back in 2005, we had one participant in UIL. Today, we have 122 kids that qualified for meets or to submit a project. We’ve definitely grown during that time.

“In 2014, I came onboard, and I saw how poorly our math teams were doing. I was coaching basketball and I thought I don’t have time to do this so I said I’ll coach a little bit before school but I’m not going to any meets. I got a little taste of it that year, and the next year we were full speed ahead.”

Taylor said Sabine High School took its first team to state competition in 2016, and the students on that trip became determined to study harder and improve their scores. In 2017, the team returned with a few more students and finished second in the state.

Those students came back home and told Stacey Bryce, Sabine ISD superintendent, that they were determined to bring home the sweepstakes award the following year.

Students earn points for their finishing place in each event, and at the conclusion of the competitions, the total amount of points for each school are tallied and awards given for “sweepstakes” finishers — those with the highest point totals.

In 2018, Sabine students won their first state championship sweepstakes finish. In 2019, they finished third in the state. Events were canceled in 2020 because of COVID-19, but the Sabine students came back in 2021 for a second-place state finish.

In 2022, Sabine began its first-place winning streak with a top finish in the 3A conference and repeated that success in 2023 and this year.

Thirty-four Sabine High School students who competed at the state level were recognized at the ceremony: Nathan Simpson, computer science; Carl Frye, science; Ryker Sheets, science; Josh Webb, science; Jonah Brenner, science; Greta Chubboy, literary criticism; Keelyn McCary, literary criticism; Natalee Head, literary criticism; Kalvari Chandler, literary criticism; Presley Johnson, spelling; Shawn Heffner, spelling; Brooklyn Maxwell, spelling; Chloe Cox, spelling; Sherane Bais, social studies; Chubboy, social studies; Ana Delgado, social studies; and Daynne Trevino, social studies.

Also, Samantha Madden, ready writing; Mikaela Haufler, copy editing; Kristian Ferguson, persuasive speaking; Olivia Horton, informative speaking; Ferguson, Lincoln-Douglas debate; Skylar McKnight, prose interpretation; Dalton Taylor, calculator; Carol Anguiano, calculator; Camryn Tatum, calculator; Garrett Woodall, calculator; Alyssa Waller, number sense; Garrett Woodall, number sense; Amelia Miller, number sense; Madox Dirksen, number sense; Taylor, mathematics; Woodall, mathematics; Carol Anguiano, mathematics; and Madison Anguiano, mathematics

Along with Taylor, other academic UIL coaches were Amy Calhoun, Tim Barker, Hunter Barr, Karen McGowan, Jessica Hatt, Marie Thompson, Natalie Byrum, Skye Duncan, Keasha Barnes, Doug Roberts and Romy Wilson.