CEDAR CITY, UT-Led by theater instructors Joshua Long and Giselle Gremmert, Hillcrest High School’s Shakespeare Team achieved a total of 13 awards in the Oxford Division of this year’s National High School Shakespeare Competition, including first place in overall sweepstakes. The competition was held Oct. 2-4 in Cedar City, Utah.
This is the twelfth time in sixteen years that Hillcrest High School has won first-place sweepstakes in this competition, and its sixth consecutive sweepstakes victory.
“I’ve met some of my best friends on that trip,” stage crew member Elise Parry said. She was the first-place winner in both the tech portfolio and sound competitions for the 2025 Shakespeare Competition’s Tech Olympics, after placing first in rigging and second in tech portfolios last year. “It’s definitely a big bonding moment of, ‘I am at my most stressed level ever, but I’m with all my friends, and we’re all helping each other get by.’”
Jordan Cecil, who was featured in the second-place-winning trio scene of Troilus and Cressida, shared more about the experience at Cedar City. After an annual rehearsal of the ensemble scene, she says, “Mr. Long always talks about… how he’s been coming down to the competition with different kids for the last 20 years. They rehearsed under the same stars, and those stars were up there when Shakespeare was writing these plays.”
Shakespeare’s masterpiece, Macbeth, was the main piece for Hillcrest’s ensemble scene this year. It was selected to be performed at the final showcase before the awards ceremony; this scene, spanning only 10 minutes, featured as many as 60 students.
Members of the team express a strong sense of connection unique to the experience of being a theater student. “If I were a student, like in all my other classes, I’m with the same people in every single class, every year, because we’re all in the same grade. But when you’re doing theater, it’s like you’re interacting with a range of different people of different ages,” Parry reflected. “I think the fact that we have such a tight community, but then have to say “bye” to people every single year—you can’t do something like Shakespeare Team or region-state without remembering, oh shoot, all these people I’m meeting and bonding with right now are going to be graduating, gone, next year.”
Hillcrest High School’s theater department has been awarded the 2025 Best of State Award in the Overall Field of Education, as well as the 2025 Best of State Medal in Theatrical Education.
“[Mr. Long] talks about all of the people that will be affected by us in our lives,” Cecil recalled, “not necessarily from theater, but just all of the people who are under the same stars as us right now, that we don’t even know.”
The team held its final showcase at Hillcrest High School on Oct. 6. Season tickets for the school’s theater performances are available for sale as of Sept. 15.
