Thunderous clapping and a boisterous roar could be heard from the back corner of the room as Union and Warrior Life, EC’s newspaper and magazine, received numerous awards at the annual Journalism Association of Community Colleges (JACC) Conference that took place in Sacramento.

At the conference, the college newspaper and magazine received the general excellence awards naming them the best in community college publications in California.

The general excellence awards honors newspapers for their coverage and content.

“Only a handful of community college broadsheets were selected for this unranked award and what’s important about it is it shows a team-spirit commitment to excellence, which has been especially strong this semester,” Jolene Combs, co-adviser for the journalism program, said.

At the conference, the 13 journalism students who attended participated against 650 students from 47 different colleges in on-the-spot competitions, accumulating a total of 18 awards including general excellence awards.

“By competing against so many different schools, it allowed us to realize how good our journalism department really is,” Michele Polendey, who won second place in the team feature/photo competition, said.

Other winners include Mary Chou, second place for photo and feature writing; Nichlaus Hulsebus, second place for photo illustration; Ronda Ayers and Michele Polendey, second place for team feature, a combination of a story and photograph, and Evan Ortega, fourth place for editorial writing.

“Being this was my first conference, I didn’t know what to expect; I was really excited to win an award for the bring-in competition,” Hulsebus said.

Sports writer, Cristian Vasquez; news writer, Kevin Ueda and features writer, Katrina Romero also were honored for their accomplishments during their respective competitions. Noraly Hernandez, managing editor, was awarded a $500 scholarship.

Staff members also earned honors for the mail-in part of the competition. Jennifer Loza won three photo awards, including third and fourth place for magazine work; John Sakata won for magazine news- feature; Darnell Walker for magazine photo essay; Eva Allen, for magazine photo essay; Marna Beilby for magazine design and layout and Tony Conte for editorial cartoon.

“It was really awesome that we were honored for our hard work,” Romero, co-editor in chief of Warrior Life said. “I only hope that this semester’s magazine is as good as the last one.”