Cleburne High School’s academic athletes brought back gold, silver and bronze from Saturday’s State UIL academic spring meet.

Senior Whittany Braswell was named the champion in UIL prose interpretation, creating a new entry in the CHS record books. Kaley Ownbey, Will Hinson, Jacob Hite and Kyle Mears continued Cleburne’s winning tradition in accounting team competition, capturing the third place spot among the top 4-A teams in the state for the fourth consecutive year. In individual scoring Ownbey was the silver medalist.

“We didn’t need a van coming back from Austin,” said Kate Hicks, who volunteers as a coach for the high school’s UIL speech program. “We could have flown home on our own steam—we were that pumped up.”

Cleburne had high hopes going into the state contest, according to UIL Coordinator Roxy Sherwood, who also serves as poetry and prose interpretation coach. Following third place finishes at Regionals by Braswell, in prose interpretation, and her twin sister Brittany Braswell, in poetry interpretation, their coaches felt like they were in medal range.

“So many times on the way up there we’d say ‘bring home the gold,’” Sherwood said. “We’ve finished as high as fourth in state and we were hoping to improve on that record this year.”

With her third place finish in the preliminary rounds on Friday, Whittany qualified for Saturday’s state finals.

“The saying ‘self doubt is poison,’ was something that had been shared with us and we kept repeating it as we worked with Whittany as she prepared for Saturday’s performance,” Sherwood said. “There were only a few small points mentioned by the judges in their critique from her preliminary performance and we all felt she should continue on with the delivery and style that had gotten her so far in this year’s UIL competitions.”

So with her sister, Brittany, and members of the CHS accounting team as her audience, Whittany practiced what would become a gold medal performance.

“After receiving a 1 by one judge, and a 4 and 5 from the other judges, I felt like I’d scraped by,” Braswell said. “I felt I really needed to dig down deep. I had to find something that I could bring to my presentation that made me different from the other finalists. I think it was ‘heart’--that and the help and support of two wonderful coaches.”

Sherwood also points to Braswell’s lighthearted selection for the state contest, which she thinks made her performance piece a standout against the deep and dark selections of her competitors.

“Her sense of comic timing has also given Whittany an edge through each competition, from District to State,” Sherwood said.

“Her gift of timing, and she has always presented material that fits her,” Hicks said.

Following the announcement of the awards, which had more than its share of suspense, Brittany was the first to congratulate her sister on being awarded Cleburne’s first state championship in a UIL speech event.

“It was very rewarding, as a coach and a member of the community, to see a student ranked among the top ten in the state in poetry interpretation hugging the state prose interpretation champion, knowing they were both from Cleburne,” Hicks said. “As Whittany went into the finals, I hoped she would beat our previous record in this competition. And she did.”

And while celebrations were in order as a new standard was set in CHS’ UIL speech program, quite a bit of celebrating—and some sighs of relief—could be heard from accounting coach Lisa Benson and her students who wanted more than anything else to continue the winning record first established in 2004 when Cleburne took the state championship.

“They were all very aware of the legacy of winning accounting teams that had come before them,” Benson said. “They really wanted to have their plaques up on the wall beside the others.”

“I felt like they would do well this year, and they did,” Benson said. “What is really exciting is that we will have three of the team, Kaley, Jacob and Kyle, back again next year.”

Kyle Mears, the sole sophomore on the team, admitted to being quietly confident going into the state contest.

“I knew we were prepared and I felt we would do fine,” Mears said. “I believed we would carry on the tradition. But my first goal was to be strong for the team.”