On March 27 at Green River College, 15 Liberty History Club members competed at the Regional Competition for their History Day Projects. This year’s theme was ‘Rights and Responsibilities’.

Of those 15 students that competed, all of them qualified for the competition’s finals for their projects and 14 of them qualified to move on to the state competition on May 2 at the Green River College.

“The projects were websites, one paper and three exhibits. We have two of our three exhibits going on to State, which is really great because exhibits are such a competitive category,” Librarian and History Day Adviser JoAnn Olsson said.

The projects are all different, and the projects continue to improve as the competitions progress from Regionals to State and beyond to Nationals.

“Because students do their History Day projects in the ninth grade, we have become dominant in the website category. All of our websites qualified, and I think they stand out for having the opportunity to qualify for nationals,” Olsson said.

To create those great projects that continue on to state, students must put in more work and time to enhance the projects more.

“For exhibits, they will redo the entire board. They will take everything off and change the color scheme, but they have done additional research and they add that research to the board to change it. They have put in a ton of time, a TON. They spend about 10-20 hours in the classroom for the class room projects,” Olsson said.

Students work on these projects almost entirely out of school, including over breaks, weekends, and after and before school. After all of the work, Olsson was happy with the results.

“Everyone made finals for their projects and everyone did a really great job. I am very proud of how they all did. This was a really great showing for Liberty,” Olsson said