University Laboratory High School (Urbana, Illinois)

The school's chess team has won the IHSA's team chess tournament seven times (1978, 1979, 1986, 1991, 1992, 1994, and 2009) and has been runner-up three times (1976, 1980, 1989). They came in second in the US National Championship in 1978 on a tiebreak.[9] Members of that team included Thomas Krause, Robert Sah, Mark Zvilius, Jonathan Atkin, and Steven Schran. The team was coached by David Sprenkle, a Uni alum and ranked chess master. Currently, the school has no competitive chess program.

April 12, 2022: This section is exceptionally long for the tertiary content. Can it be moved to a subpage, or shortened to be more in the style of the chess entry above. The summary seems to be:

Tennis, a relatively new sport at Uni has show some life.

2017: 2nd place at IHSA Sectional. Led by: Van Gunderson and Samuel Li.
2018: Won the IHSA Sectional for the first time. Led by: Van Gunderson, Samuel Li, and Donnini.
2019: Won the IHSA Sectional.  Led by: Li, Subbiah and Pradeshi.
2019: 2nd place at IHSA Sectional.
2020: Covid
2021: Made the state semi-finals "Tennis | IHSA Sports & Activities".</ref>

Subbiah is the winningest player in Uni High History, with 74 varsity wins in his four years on the team. [10]

Prior section content:

The school's tennis team did not achieve a winning team record until 2014, but recently has enjoyed a period of regional dominance behind a variety of star players. Uni achieved an 8-1 record in 2017, powered by the duo of Van Gunderson and Samuel Li. Gunderson and Li won second place at the IHSA Sectional tournament, and finished tied for 25th. In 2018, Gunderson and Li were joined by freshman singles player Zachary Donnini, who helped lead the team to a 10-3 record and the team's first sectional championship. Donnini was joined by Krishna Subbiah on the New-Gazette all-area first team. This was the first of Donnini's three all-area first team appearances. After Gunderson's graduation, a group of talented up-and-coming players—Arjun Tangella, Akash Pradeshi, and Arav Jagroop—helped Uni defend their sectional title in 2019. Donnini teamed up with Tangella to lead Uni High to their second consecutive sectional championship, defeating Centennial 4-6, 6-1, 6-2 to clinch the first individual section championship for Uni High Tennis in over 5 years. Li and Subbiah qualified for state as a doubles pair, and Pradeshi qualified as a singles player, making it the second year in a row Uni had sent five different players to state. Subbiah retired as the winningest player in Uni High History, collecting a previously unprecedented 74 varsity wins in his four years on the team. [11]

After the 2020 season was cancelled because of the COVID-19 outbreak, Uni High Tennis returned with a new look in 2021. Only Donnini and Jagroop (now senior double partners) returned from the previous Uni High Tennis Dynasty, but Uni hoped that fresh talent would allow them to collect their third consecutive sectional title. Senior Lucas Wood and Freshman Aryan Sachdev proved to be important pieces of the roster, and ultimately helped lead the team to a 12-3 record, the most regular season wins in school history. Donnini and Jagroop failed to live up to their high expectations for the majority of the season, disappointingly finishing third in the IHSA sectional tournament after a crushing semi-final loss to Central in the semifinals. Uni only finished second as a team in their IHSA Sectional, breaking their streak of team sectional championships. Lucas Wood proved to be a surprising bright spot considering he was a senior with no varsity experience, playing #2 singles by the end of the year and finishing second at the IHSA Sectional tournament. Wood would ultimately finish tied for 33rd at the IHSA State Tournament, ending an extremely successful season. Only the 16 Seed entering the IHSA State Tournament, Donnini and Jagroop enjoyed a surprise run to the state semifinals to conclude their high school tennis career. Powered by Donnini's crushing heavy-western forehand and Jagroop's net-play, athleticism, and coolness on the court, the duo defeated (#5) Mt. Zion 6-4, 6-4 to qualify for the quarter-finals and subsequently dominated (#12) Vernon Grove 6-2, 6-0 to make the semi-finals. Although Donnini and Jagroop suffered a disappointing 6-0, 7-6(4) loss to (#2) Metamora, they lead Uni High to a Top 10 finish at the State Tournament for the first time in school history. Donnini and Jagroop also became the first tennis players from the Champaign-Urbana metro area to make the state semi-finals in over 65 years, and were greeted back in Urbana by over 3,000 (estimates vary) loyal and ecstatic fans eager to congratulate the pair on their historic run.[12]

Uni High has several academic teams that compete each year and typically place highly in their respective competitions. These include Science Olympiad, Scholastic Bowl, WYSE Academic Challenge, Japan Bowl, and various math competitions.

The Uni High Scholastic Bowl team has qualified for the IHSA State Competition in four consecutive years, placing 4th in 2014 and 1st in 2015 in Class A before being bumped to Class AA and finishing 2nd in 2017.[13] Throughout the season, which roughly runs from September to March, the team participates in a variety of tournaments and competitions. The program was started as a club in 2013 by Bruce Li and members of the Class of 2015, who then secured sponsorship from the school's administration to begin competing as a team in the 2013-2014 season. Uni has since grown into one of the strongest teams in the state, winning the NAQT State Championship in 2018 and the IHSA Class AA State Championship in 2019. In 2019, Uni placed second at the National Academic Quiz Tournaments High School Championship and third at the Partnership for Academic Competition Excellence National Scholastic Championship.

Since 1997, Uni has been an annual participant in the Academic Challenge , which consists of a series of tests in various academic fields, including biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering design, English, mathematics, and physics. The competition is open to high schools in Illinois and Missouri. For nine consecutive years from 1998 to 2006, as well as in 2008, 2009 and 2011, Uni was the state champion in the smallest division (enrollment under 300). In 2007, Uni competed in the next larger division and placed 2nd, despite the school's smaller enrollment in the 9th through 12th grades.[14]

Uni High's Habitat for Humanity club works with the Clarksdale, MS Habitat affiliate. They hold several fundraisers throughout the year in order to send money to Clarksdale, as well as having an annual trip to Clarksdale every February where students work on houses. The club was founded by history teacher Bill Sutton and run by him until his retirement in 2017. The club is now run by history teacher Ben Leff.[15] Several Uni alums have moved to the Clarksdale area to work with Habitat for Humanity or to work in various schools and after-school programs.[16] Uni High's connection to Clarksdale allowed Uni High alumna Anja Theissen and Bianca Zarahescu to found Spring Initiative, a program which mentors students and prepares them for greater academic success, personal growth, and an opportunity to overcome poverty.[17]

Uni has a Food Pantry club that volunteers at and raises money for the Wesley Food Pantry. The school also has a club called United for Uganda, which raises money for a grassroots organization in Uganda called Come Let's Dance. During the 2013-2014 school year, the club started a program through Come Let's Dance to sponsor a child in Uganda's education each year.

Another example of creative freedom is Agora Days, a four-day school week in late February when students, parents, faculty, alumni and friends of the school can teach hour-long classes about a wide range of topics, which have included popular cake decorating and massage classes. Students are required to take a number of academic-oriented classes, but classes based on playing sports, watching films or TV series, and studying video games also exist. Students have the same eight-hour schedule on each of the four days.

The Wylde Q. Chicken Award, sponsored by the graduating class of 1972, is meant to recognize "spontaneous creativity," "unbidden originality," and "extraordinary acts in ordinary circumstances." It is awarded annually at the end of the school year; recipients are chosen by a panel of judges from the class of 1972 along with past winners of the award.[18] Previous winners have included a series of promotional posters for the 50 states in the first floor restrooms,[19] the staging of the American Revolution in comic strip form,[20] and a Gilbert and Sullivan-style adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth.[21]

X-Week is an annual fundraising tradition at the school. Members of Student Council choose one or two charities, which are usually local, to donate the money to. Each day, a different class hosts a fundraiser. The senior class hosts the annual Senior Auction during the Friday of X-Week every year. They auction off a wide variety of items, which usually include class notes and baked goods, as well as more eccentric options such as a movie night at a teacher's house or the opportunity to go on a safari with a few members of the senior class. The culminating event of X-Week is Big Show, a comedic, student-led production.[22] In recent years, the multiple events of X-Week have been discarded in favor of a joint X-Dinner leading up to Big Show.

The Senior Project was developed by Assistant Director of Student Life Karl Radnitzer, who got the idea from a similar program at New Trier High School in Winnetka, IL. The project's goal is to allow second semester seniors to explore interests in a more career-oriented way than they would in a typical classroom setting. The project connects students with mentors in the Champaign-Urbana community who can help them explore their academic interests outside of the school building. Students come up with ideas for projects and submit them for approval to a Senior Project committee. If a project is approved, students then spend their second semester doing work for their project around three times a week.[23] Students have worked in various labs at the University of Illinois, at the Crisis Nursery, at Carle Hospital, and at Krannert Center for the Performing Arts.[24]

Every year, the subfreshman social studies class spends part of the second semester working on an oral history project. Social Studies teacher Melissa Schoeplein's class works with WILL radio station to conduct interviews on a certain topic, which varies by year. Past topics have included inside views of the military, people with disabilities, counterculture, the right to marry, and affirmative action in education.[25] Subfreshmen are split into groups to conduct interviews. Each group member is assigned a role (either interviewer, team captain, technician, or scribe) in the interview, and the groups spend several weeks researching relevant information on their subject's life before conducting the interview. A group of older students, called WILL Interns, work with the interview material produced by the subfreshmen and turn it into an hour-long documentary published on the WILL Illinois Youth Media page.[26]

In 2014, an accounting review revealed that Uni had accumulated a debt of $1.05 million as a result of teacher salaries being charged to an account that was no longer active.[32] As an effort to correct this error, (now former) director Jeff Walkington assembled a Strategic Vision Task Force to identify improvements to Uni's budget model. The task force concluded that beyond the immediate issue of the $1.05 million dollar debt, Uni's budget was fundamentally unsustainable, and proposed solutions included charging tuition, making Uni into a charter school, and requesting more funding from the office of the provost at UIUC. However, as of spring 2019, this debt had not been rectified.[33]

In 2007, Uni High girls' track assistant coach Yuri Ermakov was convicted of criminal sexual assault, specifically sexual activity with a 15-year-old girl in 2005-2006, and distributing alcohol to minors in 2006. He was given a 12-year prison sentence, but he did not serve it, as he fled to Amsterdam before his trial.[34]

In 2020, after a 20+ year career coaching the girls' and boys' cross country and track teams, head coach Doug Mynatt was convicted of three counts of distribution and possession of child pornography, which he had viewed both from his home in Savoy, Illinois and from University of Illinois IP addresses. He pleaded guilty to all charges, and additionally admitted to having sexual relationships with two former students after they had graduated.[35] Mynatt was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison, a sentence on the low end of the sentencing guidelines and motivated in part by the 45-page letter of support he received from sympathetic Uni teachers, faculty, and parents, along with several UIUC professors.[36][37]