Greene County students earn top placements in National History Day competition

GREENE COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) - Students at William Monroe Middle and High School earned top placements at the statewide National History Day competition.

Now, the students headed to nationals to compete against other students from all over the country.

“In a school culture where there’s an emphasis on standardized testing, this is the complete opposite of it,” National History Day Lead Teacher Stephanie Hammer said.

National History Day is a competition that has students choose a topic in history to research and create a project around.

“There’s a theme, and this year’s theme was frontiers in history. They argue, make a claim with a thesis, and prove how that topic was a frontier in history,” Hammer said.

Students spend almost the entire school year constructing their projects outside of the classroom.

Eight students from Greene County earned first and second place honors. Katia Hermanson and Madeline Bruton won first place for their group performance on the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.

“We put a lot of work into it, and it was, I thought it was like really good, so I was really confident going into the competition. But after we performed it, I got really nervous,” Bruton said.

“It was like kind of scary watching them all perform and being like, ‘Oh, geez, what’s going to happen?’ So that was really cool,” Hermanson said.

Greene County has a reputation of doing well in National History Day, with this being the 14th year the school district has competed.

“[The competition] really allows students to develop their skills that apply to a history project, but apply to their English class or their science class,” Hammer said. “So the skills they learn, they not only learn how to do them, but they solidify them.”

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