We are excited to offer the first tournament in a series of virtual tournaments for UIL journalism competition. Pocket Coach Academy is pleased to offer the first scholarship-qualifying tournaments offered virtually and asynchronously specifically for UIL-style journalism.

Students will get the opportunity to compete in Copy Editing, News Writing, Feature Writing, Editorial Writing, and Headline Writing.

Watch this Video for all the details about the PCA Virtual Journalism Series!

Welcome to the PCA Journalism Virtual Tournament Series

How does this work?

Sponsors will receive the prompts the weekend before papers are due. Our first, initial deadline will be Thursday afternoon at 5pm for each paper to be submitted. Sponsors will receive a competition code through Tabroom and then upload each piece of writing through a Google Form (sent out with the prompts).

Our judges will receive the papers on Thursday evening and we will have them back to us Sunday evening. That Monday morning, we will send out results and feedback. Each paper will be rated by judges and receive comments. The entries receiving the highest rating will automatically qualify for a Championship-level tournament at the end of the season (April).

The prompts will be created by PCA staff and mirror a UIL-style prompt.

What is the cost?

Each entry will be $16. There are no other fees associated with this event and sponsors are not expected to judge.

What are the entry limits?

We will limit each event to 150 entries initially. If we have the ability to expand that, we will. All entries will be waitlisted until two weeks before the papers are due. At that point, we will be letting entries in based on their registration date. Subscribers to the Journalism Academy will be given first opportunity to compete.

Timeline for Tournament #1

• Monday, September 9 - Registration Opens
• Monday, September 30 - Waitlist Begins to Clear
• Sunday, October 13 - Prompts emailed to sponsors via Tabroom.
• Thursday, October 17 - Each paper must be submitted by 5pm via the Google Form sent out to sponsors.
• Friday, October 18-Sunday, October 20 - Judges grade papers.
• Monday, October 21 - Feedback and ratings published for sponsors. Qualifiers announced.

We look forward to providing this opportunity to your students!