State Latin Convention a successful event for middle school students

This story was submitted by middle school Latin teacher Lisa Masoni. 

A delegation of 19 middle school Latin students kicked off spring break with the Junior Classical League’s second (and hopefully last) Virtual State Latin Convention. Some students chose to attend virtually together, welcoming a group of upper school students to the library to attend assemblies, workshops and competitions over Zoom. It was the first visit to the Union campus for some of the upper school students.

The middle school delegation took third place in Spirit with seventh grader Megha Unny’s poster and song parody, titled “The Twelve Days of Saturnalia.” Other school awards included first place for Scrapbook (Chelsea Xie, historian, grade 7) and third for T-shirt Design (Raeanne Li, grade 7).

The MS1 certamen (quiz bowl) team of sixth graders Avi Gupta, Rory Hu, Zahra Syed and Lucas Yuan placed first in the state. The MS3 team – eighth graders Aidan Okyar, Kairui Sun and Rahul Sundaresan – placed second in their division, and the MS2 team – seventh graders Ameera Ramzan, Sanjith Senthil, Vera Sorotokin and Chelsea Xie – lost a heartbreaking tie breaker for third place and a seat in the final round, but fourth in the state is nothing to sneeze at!

Several upper school students will serve on the California JCL state board for the 2022-23 school year: sophomore Trisha Iyer as historian and junior Tiffany Chang as Nuntius editor. In addition, junior Rupert Chen was approved by the state to run for national first vice president.

Last but not least, Raeanne Li’s opinion piece for The Eagle Gazette on the need for students to respect each other’s choices for language study won Best School-Affiliated Media in the National Junior Classical League Publicity Contest for the month of March, with the following notification from the NJCL:

“Thank you for your submission for the Publicity Contest. This was a wonderful article, and we were moved by the message.”  

Individual awards for the middle school delegates are listed below:

MS1/Grade 6:

Avi Gupta: Second in Daily Life, third in Derivatives, second in Pentathlon

Rory Hu: First in Derivatives, first in Reading Comprehension, first in Vocabulary, third in Dramatic Interpretation

Charlene Li: Fourth in Grammar, third in Mythology

Zahra Syed: First in Geography, second in Derivatives, first in Mythology

Lucas Yuan: Second in Geography, first in Grammar, first in Pentathlon, second in Reading Comprehension

MS2/Grade 7:

Shamik Khowala: Second in Daily Life, fourth in Mottoes; third in Reading Comprehension, first in Vocabulary, third in Dramatic Interpretation, second in Sight Reading

Lily Peng: Second in Classical Art, third in Geography, fourth in Daily Life, third in Grammar

Ameera Ramzan: Third in E-lympika Sit-ups, third in Daily Life, second in Grammar, second in Roman History, second in Reading Comprehension, third in Vocabulary, second in Latin Oratory

Vera Sorotokin: First in Vocabulary, first in Mottoes

Abby Wang: First in Daily Life, third in Derivatives, fourth in Reading Comprehension

Chelsea Xie: Third in Derivatives, third in Reading Comprehension, second in Dramatic Interpretation

Demi Zheng: Fourth in Derivatives

MS3/Grade 8:

Marisa Masoni: Third in Mythology, first in Painting, first in Mosaic

Aidan Okyar: First in Classical Art, first in Roman History, first in Mottoes, second in Mythology

Kairui Sun: First in Derivatives, first in Grammar, first in Reading Comprehension

Rahul Sundaresan: Second in Roman History, first in Mythology

Jonathan Szeto: First in Geography, second in Reading Comprehension