Star Valley High School’s Drama Team brought home the 3A Sweepstakes Gold Medal from the 2025 Wyoming State Thespian Festival that was held in Laramie December 5-6. This is the first time SVHS has been awarded the first-place state ribbon in the festival. Top ranking was also earned for their Proscenium Play with a perfect score of 105 points.
SVHS has not taken a one-act play to the state festival since 2019. Tami Nielsen, SVHS Drama Coach, adapted Reed McColm’s “Hole in the Sky,” which is set in the Twin Towers of New York City on September 11, 2001.
“Reed gave me special permission to cut his [80 minute] script to 40 minutes,” said Nielsen in an email to SVI Media. “So, this was the first time the play had ever been performed as a one-act. It was a very difficult play to do, but I knew we had the actors to make it amazing!”
Earning the 105 points for this play meant that each of the three judges awarded a perfect score for the presentation. Judges “could not tell us anything they thought would have improved the play. They spent the 30-minute feedback time telling us only of the things the kids did that were amazing and why it was such an important script that should be performed!”
Students from the SVHS team participated in many additional individual categories. The top scores from their best five categories were added to the one-act score to determine SVHS as the sweepstakes winner. Of the 30 submissions that SVHS took to state, they also earned 14 All-state honors and seven honorable mentions.
