The students line the outskirts of the hallways as the cheerleaders take point, cheering down the hallway followed by the Sapphires throwing their hands up and clapping with the percussion section of band playing beats on their drums.

The student body gathered at 9:05 a.m. Feb. 21 to send off their academic and athletic peers to state competition. Juniors Charles Tucker and his partner Ethan Umanos were sent off for team animation. Junior Cody Hogan was celebrated for fundamentals of web design. Juniors Geronimo Saucedo and Jose Sanchez were also recognized for heading to state for wrestling.

“The send off we had was really cool,” Tucker said. “That’s the first time I was actually inside the send off instead of being one who was cheering. I found it awfully strange that we had a send off this early in the day because we usually have them in the afternoon.”

Junior Cody Hogan is going to state competition for the fundamentals of web design. He coded a website on his own for a company that was in need of someone to make the website respond when clicked onto.

“The way it works is, first I need to create two separate text codes for the website and use each of the other codes to transfer the data to the webpage,” Hogan said.

His competition is Feb. 21 in Corpus Christi.