Last year’s edition of Summit’s Pinnacle Yearbook, “You Should’ve Been There” received an All-Missouri Award from the Missouri Interscholastic Journalism Association. On Jan. 8, the Pinnacle Yearbook staff was able to receive news of their achievement. Yearbook Editor-in-Chief, senior Trevi Guest was Associate Editor during the 2024-2025 school year. Having been involved in the publication for her entire high school career, she said that receiving this award has highlighted the program’s major progress.
“In recent years, I feel like the journalism program has really grown a lot. I think this award reflects that, it shows we are coming together and getting better as a program. That is something we’ve wanted to work on in recent years, we haven’t received this award since 2019. Growing our program, trying to get everyone involved, we have a lot more leadership positions than we’ve ever had before. So overall, I think that this has been reflected by the award, because there are a lot of people putting in the work,” Guest said.
Yearbooks are measured on a 500 point scale. In order to receive an All-Missouri ranking, the edition must score 450 out of 500 points or above, which is a total of five 100 point scale categories: Theme/Concept/Services, Coverage, Writing/Editing, Design, and Photography. The 2025 Pinnacle received a score of 488. The judge for the 2025 Pinnacle yearbook left several critiques and praises addressed to Summit’s yearbook staff, eulogizing the publication’s work.
“To the student staff of the Pinnacle, thanks for sharing your book with me. I just absolutely adore your book. You guys knocked it out of the park. To create 275 pages of in depth, high quality journalism is commendable and to raise it to the level [you all] did was fantastic to see. Excellent work,” the judge wrote.
Senior Avery Martin, who was a new staff member during the 2024-2025 school year and currently serves as the Associate Editor, said that the award was a surprise, but the judge’s comments were accurate to the publication’s hard work and contribution to the product.
“I was kind of shocked, I didn’t know it was coming, but I’m excited that all of our hard work got recognized with this big award. I think it will help us with this year’s book, continuing what we did well, and improving on what the judges thought needed to [be done] better. I think everyone did such a good job and I think [this award] really shows that,” Martin said.
