By: Morgan Sharbaugh

On March 16, Bellbrook High School’s Pen Ohio team competed in the Regional Competition at Dublin Coffman High School.  After the JV team came in second place, three students advanced to state.

Pen Ohio is a competition where the young writers are given a prompt and 40 minutes to write a story off of the given prompt. The writers do this a total of three times per competition, then the writers give their stories to the two judges assigned to their room. The judges then judge their stories based on plot, description, and overall how well written the stories are. Their stories are ranked 1-6 and then the top-ranked story for that room is sent on to be judged again against the other top stories.  The stories are given quality points 1-100 as well. The amount of quality points have determines whether or not the competitors move on.

Amanda Marquet, teen librarian at the Winters Library, runs the school’s Pen Ohio club. For the whole school year, she has been working with these young writers on better developing their stories and writing so the reader enjoys the story as well.

Junior Lucas Flanagan from the Varsity team and Sophomores Angela Davis and Morgan Sharbaugh from the JV team represented Bellbrook at this year’s state competition held at Lake Erie College on May 17. The students wrote well, they showed promising scores, but unfortunately did not place in the top six who were recognized.

Regrettably due to legal complications between Pen Ohio and Power of the Pen (Pen Ohio for the middle school), competitions will not be held next year, but the school’s club will continue.