Junior staff reporter Beatrix Lozach was crowned the 2025 UIL 5A state champion in ready writing during the UIL State Academic Meet held Tuesday, May 20, at the University of Texas’s Welch Hall.

Lozach became the first McCallum student to win a state championship at the UIL Academic Meet in at least a decade and probably much longer than that, said Dave Winter, McCallum’s UIL academic coordinator for the last 10 years.

The University Interscholastic League is a state organization that administers competitions within school systems across athletics, academics and musical performances. Ready Writing, part of the academic competition within UIL, challenges students to write an argumentative or expository essay with little preparation and a time limit based on the topic provided. Each student is given two hours and must write an expository essay that answers one of two prompts they are given. 

Before competing in the state meet, Lozach won first place in ready writing and headline writing at the 5A Region 3 Academic Meet held April 26 at A&M Consolidated High School in College Station.

She almost missed the early morning ready writing competition entirely.

Most of the Mac academic team stayed at a hotel in College Station, and Winter recalled the first shuttle to the first competitions at regionals that morning that included the ready writing and current events competitions.

”The entire current events team is in the car, and
I’m in the van with the keys, ready to go,” he said. “We look around. No Beatrix.” 

Realizing the team van needed to depart for the school, Winter left the van and knocked on the door to Lozach’s room to find that she had overslept.

“In my defense,” Lozach said, “I overslept because I’d never been to College Station before, and so I had some fun the previous night with my friends getting coffee and exploring as well as practicing for the headline competition.”

Despite rolling out of bed and into the early morning event, Lozach placed first in ready writing. 

Later in the day, she repeated that result with a first-place finish in headline writing. 

The time of the awards announcement was unusual because reading writing was announced late in the afternoon long after the competitors had turned in their essays.

Walking toward the library where verifications was to occure, Lozach told Winter that she felt that she did not win. 

“We were walking up to the results table, and Beatrix said to me she wasn’t going to win and claimed there were so many smart people in that room,” Winter said. “I asked her, ‘Beatrix, were you in that room?’ To which she replied, ‘Yes. Well, if there were so many smart people in the room, and you were in the room, guess what? You’re one of the smart people that were in the room.’”

Winter’s prediction proved accurate as he came back from the verification table with the news that Lozach had placed first place in reading writing. Winter was ecstatic.  

“It was absolutely great,” he said. “First place, baby.”

Soon after that came the good news that she had placed first and teammate Delaney Lavelle third in headline writing.

After Lozach returned to Austin from College Station, only one more piece of drama remained: springing the good news of her double region championship on her mom.

“As soon as I got into the car, it was really quiet, because you know I have a flair for the dramatic,” Lozach said. “I wanted to give my mom a little suspense. I gave her a little smirk and finally she got the message to which she was so excited.”

Lozach and Lavelle’s performance at regionals qualified them both for the state meet. At State, however, headline writing was in the afternoon on the first day of the competition and ready writing was first thing in the morning on the second day. 

After competing in headline writing the day before, Lozach was tired but determined to rise to the challenge. 

“I showed up extremely early at 7:45 in the morning,” she said. “I was absolutely exhausted,
and I competed the day before in headline writing, which I got fourth in. Along with the exhaustion I was anxious, but I soon met up with Mr. Winter, and we discussed things beforehand, which really made my anxiety dissipate.”

As she did at regionals, Lozach was up to the early morning challenge. 

Prior to her first-place finishes at state and region, Lozach placed first in ready writing at the district meet Saturday March 29 at McCallum. McCallum teammates Shila Gill placed secon and Alina [last name] fourth.

The three first-place finishes are even more remarkable because Lozach was something of a fill-in competitor. Originally, junior Sofia Saucedo was going to compete in ready writing, but she was unable to attend the competition and therefore suggested to Winter that Lozach take her spot.

“She was in my English class at the beginning of the school year, and during class discussion, Beatrix always had a good way to interpret what we were learning and understood the concepts quickly,” Saucedo said. “She’s quick on her toes, and has a really good understanding and comprehension of the material, so I immediately nominated her.” 

Lozach felt that practice, experience, and a great teacher was the best form of preparation for ready writing. The assignments, conversations and background knowledge from Lozach’s AP Language class were factors that helped her win. 

“The way I mainly practiced for this competition was just accumulating information and also reading and writing essays,” she said. “I had a lot of practice with that due to my AP Lang class this year, and my teacher [Eric Wydeven], who prepared us extremely well for the exam, just because of the large amount of writing we had done.”

Though preparing for the competition by writing and studying was vital to Lozach’s success, so was learning how to adapt to stressful situations, she explained, relating her experience and ability to cope with anxiety to a diamond, both durable and strong.

“My favorite stone is a diamond, not because it’s pretty, but because it’s the most durable, and it’s held together with covalent network bonds,” Lozach said. ”Basically, the idea [is] that you can be battled/challenged and still come out, you know, sparkling, like a diamond.” 

Lozach says her biggest takeaway from getting to compete at the state meet was her liking to write expository essays, which allows her to connect and write about subjects she cares about. 

“The prompt [at State] this year was about the importance of art in defending democracy,” she said. “It was a quote from Ursula Klin who’s a renowned author, and I’ve always really loved her work. I think it’s really important to maintain that love of literature and that’s what was my greatest asset here.”