Atwater students’ courageous raindrop, mighty grape win ‘Imagine This’ essay contest

One story details the thoughts of a reticent raindrop about to fall on drought-stricken California, and the other is the biography of Great Grandpa Grape, once a magnificent grape but now a raisin destined for a woman’s kitchen cabinet.

Two students at St. Anthony’s Catholic School in Atwater won the “Imagine This” essay contest conducted by the Sacramento-based California Foundation for Agriculture in the Classroom.

They will receive medals, certificates, electronic reading devices and trips to Sacramento for their creativity and imagination. Their teachers get money for classroom supplies.

Grace Reyes, 13, an eighth-grader, penned “The Raindrop’s Great Courage.” The six-paragraph story she wrote in November is a whimsical look at the timid raindrop which finally summons the bravado to come to Earth to sustain the state’s agricultural environment.

Kayleigh Lugowski, 10, a fifth-grader, said she enjoys using her imagination, which spilled over into “The Story of Great Grandpa Grape.” That nine-paragraph piece of hypothetical prose follows the grape’s start as a seed to its magnificence as a grape and then ultimately a raisin, which ends up stuck in a muffin.

Grace also won the “Imagine This” contest three years ago. St. Anthony’s Principal Marianne Flynn said the school encourages its students to write a lot, adding Grace is a natural in any kind of writing exercise.

“I am very proud of them,” Flynn said. “We said, ‘Here you go, come up with something.’ There were only six state winners and we had two of them.” There were about 8,000 entries for the eighth-grade alone.

Kayleigh, a Turlock resident and St. Anthony’s student since preschool, likes grape juice. She was surprised to learn she won the state award. Grace lives on a 60-acre almond farm in Winton with her parents, Peggy and Martin Reyes.

Peggy Reyes said her daughter has had an active imagination since she was very young. She said Grace is an excellent student and writer, crediting her teachers with bringing out her creativity and command of good grammar.

The winning essays will be assembled into a book. Winning students will get a trip to Sacramento and a chance to read their stories there March 18 during National Ag Day. They also will be included in a booth at the State Fair at Cal Expo in late August.

St. Anthony’s has 89 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. The school has been participating in the ag writing contest for 15 years, Flynn said.

Regional winners in the contest from St. Anthony’s included Grace and Kayleigh, along with eighth-grader R.J. Garcia; Riley Parr and Aryanna Sobrevilla, both sixth-graders; fifth-grader Jacob Nunes; and seventh-grader Lehna Foster.

This story was originally published January 19, 2015 at 5:37 PM with the headline "Atwater students’ courageous raindrop, mighty grape win ‘Imagine This’ essay contest."