CVHS Senior is Student Journalist of the Year

Brynna Hope Heflin, editor-in-chief of Centreville High School's student newspaper, The Sentinel, recently won the Virginia High School League’s 2011 Student Journalist of the Year and Charles Savedge Scholarship.  

Heflin was the unanimous choice of a three-person selection committee composed of college journalism educators and a professional journalist. 

“Brynna has implemented a number of significant changes, such as increasing the number of issues by 80 percent, changing the format from a newsmagazine to a newspaper and shifting the focus to a more school-oriented publication,” The Sentinel's newspaper adviser Kathleen Willmann said in a press release.  “As a result, there has been a tremendous increase in interest from the student body.”

Willmann said that under Heflin's leadership, the school often runs out of issues before everyone is able to obtain a copy.

Heflin oversees the work of nine section editors as well as the reporters and writers who work in each of those sections. She leads the staff in establishing the focus of each issue of the paper, vets ideas for articles, establishes deadlines, edits articles, contributes stories and solicits ads to raise funds.   

She has been involved with high school journalism since she was a freshman, as sports reporter and writer as a sophomore and features reporter and writer as a junior.  

She maintains a 4.158 grade point average, has applied for admission to and has been accepted by the University of North Carolina, and is awaiting notification from the University of Virginia.