Congratulations to Deer Lakes seniors Jessie Windows, Katie Smagala, and Abigail Smagala who placed third in the virtual National History Day regional competition!
The dream team has participated in the National History Day competition for seven consecutive years and has qualified for states four times, three of which were during middle school.
“It’s awesome to place in the senior division,” Katie said. “We know what the junior division is like at states, and we’ve never seen what the senior division is like at states so it’s exciting to get to experience that now.”
Abigail said they first became a group in sixth grade because they were the only three girls on a gifted education trip.
“We have been happily stuck together since then for each year’s competition,” Abigail said. “We just kept going with it and had fun.”
Jessie, Katie, and Abigail chose to focus their senior year efforts on Fred Rogers who hosted Mr. Rogers for decades.
“In the past, we’ve typically done women in history, but this year because everything was digital and the difficulties with creating a project we decided to do something that was going to be fun for us to talk about,” Abigail said. “We also thought it would be something that would be easy to translate into an online format. Because Mr. Rogers was a TV show, we knew there would be a lot of online resources.”
Despite the inherent challenges with putting together a project while spending less time together than in past years, this was the most fun they’ve had in the competition.
“We made this our fun year, and we got to finish on a high note,” Jessie said. “We did what we really wanted to do. We wanted to be able to say we did it for seven years, every year that we could have, and we did together.”
What else are they involved in?
Jessie - Track and Field, Cross Country, Volleyball, Drama Club, Recreational and Competition Dance, National Honor Society, French National Honor Society, Girl Scouts, Student Council Senior Class Senator
Abigail - National Honor Society, Choir, Marching Band, Strings, Girl Scouts, French National Honor Society, Involved in High School Musicals
Katie - A.W. Beattie for Advertising Design, SkillsUSA, National Honor Society, National Technical Honor Society, Marching band, Concert Band