The Union Online and Warrior Life Magazine were awarded General Excellence by the Journalism Association of Community Colleges this past weekend at the Southern California conference, a two-day event at Cal State University of Fullerton.

“I was just really excited to go for the overall experience and to meet with all the professorial journalists,” Nadia Basich, staff writer, said.

Along with the general awards, Union staff writers attained individual awards including three from on-the-spot competitions bringing the total to 17 awards.

Matthew Simon, sports editor, placed first in sports writing, third in layout, and received honorable mention for copy editing.

“Going into JACC, I didn’t really have any expectations,” Simon said. “This semester I’ve just been really focused on taking sports seriously and blowing up photos.”

“Even now, I think, man, I could have done something different,” Simon said regarding the news layout. “I decided to go off a newspaper that’s in Virginia called The Virginian Pilot. They tend to feature a story above the flag — which I think really helped me in terms of getting noticed by the judges.”

Immediately following the news layout was the sports competition that required Simon, competing in both fields, to run across the Fullerton campus.

“I literally had to go run just to get there in time,” Simon said. “The game went for about three hours, then we get back and I really was not into it to be completely honest. I just threw everything together, hoped that my lead would carry me and it did.”

This year’s keynote speaker was Elyse Peterson, El Camino journalism lecturer, who presented an hour long testimony about the physical and emotional journey to becoming a journalist.

“I loved and felt honored to be able to speak as the keynote speaker for JACC,” Peterson said. “I’ve gotten a couple emails already of people thanking me for speaking because they felt motivated to keep going and they were kind of feeling struggling — I know that, I’ve been there. I feel grateful if I could add any inspiration or help anyone to pursue their dreams — because I know it’s out there.”

“It was a really good learning experience, I was excited to see Elyse Peterson because I have a lot of the same interests as her,” Basich said. “I felt so motivated and inspired.”