For the second straight year, Hawaii Baptist Academy’s student journalists took home top honors at the annual Hawaii High School Journalism Awards held Wednesday at the Pagoda Hotel Ballrooms.

Although most of its staff members were in their first year working on the paper, Hawaii Baptist was named best in the state. The private school was followed by Mililani High School and Sacred Hearts Academy.

“All of us wanted to try our best and put our best work out there,” said Hawaii Baptist junior Kayci Kumashiro, a writer and editor of the Eagle Eye.

“As new staffers we wanted to prove ourselves and show that we can still keep the title,” added staff writer and cartoonist Gavin Arucan.

Eleven public schools and seven private schools statewide competed in 21 categories. The categories ranged from news and editorial writing to photography and digital illustration.

The contest was held by the Hawaii Publishers Association, Honolulu Star-Advertiser, MidWeek, Generations Magazine, Hagadone Printing Co., Honolulu Publishing Co., Journal Graphics, Morris Visitor Publications, PacificBasin Communications and This Week Publications.

In the first round, one group of judges reviewed entries from the public schools while another group evaluated the private school submissions. The winning public school entry and winning private school entry were then judged by another group to determine an overall state winner in each category.

Schools that garnered the most points across all categories won the top best-in-state awards.

For Hawaii Baptist, that meant collecting nine first places in the state division.

Mililani was second in the best-in-state awards thanks to seven first-place awards in the public school division and two first-place awards in the state division.

Sacred Hearts netted just one third-place award in the private school division a year ago, but this year won eight categories in the private school division and six in the state division.