The American Scholastic Press Association honored the 2009 edition of SAGA with the first place award for Best Yearbook and the first place award for Best Theme.

Every summer SAGA editors meet at yearbook camp, where they plan out the book and decide what the theme will be. 2009 SAGA Editor-in-Chief Andrea Jones noted that they wanted to make last year’s theme, “POP!,” more of a storybook.

“In past years it was based on a design element,” Jones said. “I was really excited [to win the award], and I thought that as a team we worked really hard together so I’m really glad the effort paid off. It’s nice to be recognized.”

High schools submit their yearbooks to the association at the end of the year and to earn first place a yearbook must receive between 1000 and 1100 points.

“I was delighted and especially proud of that group of students,” yearbook advisor Beth Rockwell said. “It is an outstanding yearbook in many ways. The timing of choosing a comic book theme was especially magical because of the popularity of images portraying Obama as a superhero.”

Yearbook staff sophisticated the comic book concept as the year progressed and many of the illustrations were hand drawn by Will Crum (’09). SAGA last won first place from the association in 2004.