La Jolla High students take top prize in nationwide prose and poetry contest

La Jolla High students have taken top individual honors and the sophomore team took seventh in the year-end national standings at the recent WordWright Challenge, a national competition of high school students' reading and analysis.

Vivi Bonomie

Clay Halbert

Alma Halgren

Rebecca Ryan

Three of the school's students won highest honors for year-long achievement are sophomore Clayton Halbert, was the highest-ranked tenth grader in the entire country in the year-end standings, Junior Alma Halgren was one of the three highest-ranked eleventh graders and her teammate Nika Ostevar-Sirjani was one of the 19 highest-ranked eleventh graders nationwide.

Nearly 70,000 students from nearly 600 schools around the nation participated in the competition, which required students to analyze works ranging from short stories to poetry to essays. Its focus is on the verbal questions of the SAT. Several competitions are held throughout the school year

Used this year were an opinion essay published in the New York Times and an excerpt from a novel by Anthony Trollope.