For Rae Gray, senior year was one for the record books.

And not the good record books.

Gray, a 2021 graduate of Bowie High School, was one of millions of students who were sent home during their junior year because of COVID concerns, and she never returned to campus for a high school class again.

“Senior year completely remote was a really difficult time for me,” Gray said. “Looking back it’s hard not to be upset about how much of high school I missed out on because of quarantine.”

Just because she didn’t return to campus, doesn’t mean she wasn’t doing school though. In fact, she was a core part of the Bowie Dispatch newspaper team. And this week she learned that her efforts have placed her in the top-10 nationally for scholastic journalism, when she was announced as a nominee for the Portfolio Artist of the Year by the National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA).

“I almost started crying when I found out,” Gray said. “On the Dispatch Staff, we hold ourselves to exceedingly high standards and put a lot of training and effort into the work we put out. A lot of the time we can be our own worst critic so it’s rewarding to see that work be recognized on a national scale. It can seem silly, but while I was a student at Bowie, the Dispatch was my main outlet for my creative passions. I look back at the limited time that I got to spend in high school and the best memories that I have are from working in the newspaper room.”

She wasn’t the only member of staff to earn such high praise. Cade Spencer and Faith Lawrence, the Dispatch co-Editor-in-Chiefs were both selected by NSPA for their work. Spencer will compete for the top spot of Writer of the Year, while Lawrence’s award will come as part of the small group of Designers of the Year.

“My work for The Dispatch throughout my senior year was my primary outlet of creativity, written expression, and intellectual exploration within the time of COVID-19,” Spencer said. “I am incredibly grateful for the growth, empathy, and knowledge I was able to develop through the pieces I wrote, and I am honored to be a nominee for Writer of the Year.”

Lawrence will double down on awards as they were also nominated for another award, Newspaper Page/Spread.

“Working on The Dispatch was the highlight of my high school years,” Lawrence said. “I was grateful to hear about my award nominations as I had never found much satisfaction in journalistic awards because it was my hobby while in high school. Now in college, it was very exciting to learn about the nominations, and I hope the staff as a whole does well in the competition.”

An unexpected qualifier was current junior Natalie Cullen, who has been tapped as one of the top-10 Multimedia Journalists of the Year. Cullen leads a small team of eager online journalists running the dispatchonline.net, which is still a growing part of the program.

“Honestly, I am not a great broadcast or video teacher,” Dispatch advisor Michael Reeves said. “Of all of the nominations, this was the most unexpected. Natalie makes great videos, and she has proven to be worthy of the editor-in-chief of our online product, but since I don’t spend a lot of time coaching students on multimedia I was surprised. Natalie deserves all the credit for her work. I guess I need to lean on her more to push even harder next year.”

Joining the Dispatch winners are a pair of Bowie Yearbook students, Grace Conlan and Ryan Kinney. Conlan and Kinney were the Editors-in-Chief of the Lone Star yearbook last year and both earned nominations. Kinney will join Lawrence in the Designer of the Year competition, while the pair of Kinney and Conlan also placed in Yearbook Theme Package.

“I knew following my junior year as Editor-in-Chief that it was my ultimate goal to be nominated for Designer of the Year,” Kinney said. “I never anticipated becoming a finalist in both design and theme, and it makes me genuinely so proud of myself and Grace. Knowing firsthand the work we put into this book makes receiving these nominations that much more surreal.”

NSPA takes entries from around the country each year as part of their individual award contests. Students are ranked in multiple categories including writing, design, photography, broadcast, and even cartoons and comics. The top-10 in each category are recognized for their efforts, with the top-5 receiving plaques that are given out at the National High School Journalism Convention held in the fall.

“With the pandemic impacting schools across the country, many of the papers and magazines submitted for the competition were produced with student journalists working under very challenging situations,” NSPA Associate Director Gary Lundgren said. “The high-quality journalism these publications provided, against all odds, is remarkable.”

The students will find out exactly what place they earned this Saturday, Nov. 13 when NSPA hosts a virtual awards ceremony as part of the NSPA National Journalism Convention virtual convention.

“Our student journalists knew that even with an empty campus, there were still 3,000 students with stories to be told,” Lone Star yearbook adviser Lindsey Shirack said. “In an unprecedented year, our journalists connected a dispersed community through uncertain times. This national recognition is a fitting finish to the work and commitment our students showed.”

In addition to the individual awards winners, the Dispatch also learned last week that they had earned their fourth straight NSPA Pacemaker nomination. The Pacemaker is the national award that honors the best scholastic student newspapers in the country. Winning a Pacemaker is similar to the professional press winning a Pulitzer Prize.

“The Pacemaker is the association’s preeminent award,” NSPA Executive Director Laura Widmer said. “NSPA is honored to recognize the best of the best.”

All 65 schools nationally were named as finalists, while 28 will earn Pacemakers. The Dispatch has won three straight Pacemakers and the staff has high hopes of a fourth award. The Pacemakers will also be announced at the virtual NSPA convention in mid-November.

“We have become a solid contender each year for these national awards and I am so pleased that we have been nominated again,” Reeves said. “What makes this particular year so special is that every single issue of the 2020-21 newspaper was produced by students working at home because of the pandemic. I did not see a single newspaper student last year in person.”

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