Irvine High's student newspaper is tops at state competition for the second straight year

Irvine High School’s student newspaper continued its era of dominance at the Southern California Journalism Education Association State Write-Offs, taking top honors for the second straight year -- and the fourth time in six years.

Oh, and the fifth time in 13 years. The El Vaquero beat out 19 other publications this time to win the statewide journalism competition’s overall Newspaper Sweepstakes on April 28 at Cal State Long Beach. Irvine also won in 2000, 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2011. Fourteen El Vaquero staffers participated in this year's event, including Juhi Dalal, Shikhar Gupta, Crystal Huang, Edwin Huh, Nicole Kim, Johanna Lee, Ivy Lin, Lynne Liu, Disha Mehta, Trisha Nguyen, Peter Niu, Clinton O’Grady, Stephanie Wang and Karen Wen. In addition, Editor-in-Chief Trisha Nguyen has been named the recipient of a $1,000 scholarship awarded by the SCJEA. Irvine High also won the sweepstakes at the Orange County Journalism Education Association Write-Off in February. Writers in the news, editorial, feature and sports categories had to qualify at the county level to compete in the Southern California contest.