Each year Okawville High School enters our yearbook into the Illinois Journalism Education Association Yearbook Contest. Dr. Sally Renuad coordinated the contest. She is a journalism professor at Eastern Illinois University, and former IJEA executive director.  The judges were picked from experienced journalists, teachers, and advisors. The deadline for each yearbook was mid-November.

In this contest, each book was judged between eight different categories: copywriting, sports coverage, photography, graphics, divider pages, layout and design, theme development, and coverage of the school year. The books were put into a specific placing and earned points for the different rankings. First place would receive five points, second place would receive four points,  third place would receive three points, and honorable mention would receive one point.

“The judges were impressed with the efforts to cover changes in the spring calendar due to COVID-19 restrictions. In particular, they noted that sports sections got creative to tell the story of lost seasons, and graduation spreads highlighted alternative graduation ceremonies and how students and faculty adapted to their new learning environments.” says Dave Porreca, CJE, Illinois JEA Board Member on the IJEA website.

Our yearbook was put in division one, this division has an enrollment of 185 or fewer.  The Okawville yearbook staff was able to work together and meet in the classrooms for the majority of the school year, but when COVID hit a couple of students volunteered to work on the yearbook from home. Even though our adviser, Mrs. Donovan and her yearbook staff had to face many struggles in finding new and creative ways to design the yearbook around our 2019-2020 school year; they did not fail to put a great representation on our school.   The Okawville yearbook received second place for best overall yearbook, first place for coverage of the year, first place for layout and design, third place in the graphics category, second place in sports coverage, first place in the copywriting category, and Honorable Mention Divider pages.