(Alaa Tageldin)
“I kept replaying the memory of me taking the shot all night – as much as it was over, it was not over.” Hanan Alaiti, 12th grader, explains how she felt the night after the MIST competition – tossing and turning over what could’ve been done differently, Ms. Alaiti needed some time before realizing all of the excellent memories that she had made and how this experience will ultimately end up giving her a new perspective on trying something new.
Frantic preparation, weekend friendships, and loud-and-proud school spirit. This is what makes up the Muslim Interscholastic Tournament (MIST) – the annual competition held amongst Islamic schools and MSAs all over Dallas (and beyond). Muslims both come together and compete at this eagerly anticipated event, hoping to place top 5 and get their schools on the leaderboard. Our school, BHA, Brighter Horizons Academy, is one of these schools. Through much hard work, MIST has become a staple of BHA high school life, and over 80 people participated last year. Rushing last minute to be as ready as they could to compete in activities they love, BHA students prepared and did their best at both the regional and national competition, having a blast with chanting and fun workshops along the way. However, while BHA students certainly know about MIST the competition, they may not know how people were feeling and preparing for their competitions. Those in MIST and out may wonder – how are people preparing for this exciting event? How did the competitions go? And how do they feel afterwards?
This is what we aim to discover today.
Our first interviewee is Ahmed Sajjad, an 11th grader. He participated in Science Fair, Flag Football, and Original Oratory. Interviewed a week before the regional competition last year, Mr. Sajjad was feeling confident in his three competitions. He mentioned that Original Oratory was a tough competition, and he felt behind on practice with Flag Football, a sentiment agreed on by many of the players.
On the more cooking and videography side of things, we have Aleena Ahmed, a 12th grader. Her competitions were Short Film, Knowledge Test Level 3, and Culinary Arts. Ms. Ahmed, who had prior experience with culinary arts – whether cooking for fun or competition – described culinary preparation as “a lot of prep, but fun”. Knowledge Test was described as a “hit or miss”, because you can never really tell what the test will be like. Short Film, a group project, had the most obstacles, such as “coordinating film timings, working around different ideas, and cooperating.”
One of BHA MIST’s newbies, Aisha Aslam, 10th grader, was a freshman who is competed in MIST for the first time last year. Ms. Aslam explained that “since it’s my first year, and my first high school competition, I’m both excited and scared. I don’t know how good the other schools are.” Competing in Knowledge Test, Ms. Aslam said that, “I got behind in prep because the book arrived late, but I’m making good progress now. I don’t like how we’re not allowed annotations though.”
An enjoyer of the visual arts, Nawal Iqbal, 12th grader, competed in Short Film and 3D art last year. After she had submitted her art piece, Ms. Iqbal mentioned a highlight of the competition to be, “after we turned it in, you could see everyone’s art. Mashallah, everyone’s art is always really beautiful.” Ms. Iqbal mentioned that seeing this art made her feel both inspired and reminded her of how tough the competition was, which made the idea of not placing feel a little easier to accept.
Ms. Alaiti, who also competed in Girls’ Recitation as well as Prepared Essay, stated before her competitions that she was “pretty scared since she was behind on preparation”. After the competition, she once again emphasized this, believing that had she prepared more, she might have placed top 5.
A dynamic student, Ahmad Kadiwala, 12th grader, competed in a variety of competitions last year: Chess, Brothers Improv, and Flag Football. Mr. Kadiwala was concerned about the lack of players in Flag Football, explaining that it constituted a roadblock to effective preparation. However, this didn’t end up mattering as the competition was later cancelled. Another concern of Mr. Kadiwala lay in Brothers Improv. He, as well as some of the other Brothers Improv members such as Mr. Haq, explained the difficulties of not having enough people show up to practice. Mr. Kadiwala explained, “We have a total of 6 people for improv, but only 3-4 show up for practice. We can’t learn people’s strengths and weaknesses as we can’t practice with each other. It already takes time and effort to learn Improv, and not having everyone there makes it even more difficult.” This represents a good tip to keep in mind for future competitors- show up to practice! The boys still ended up doing well – 3rd place – but believed they could’ve done even better with a little more coordination.
BHA faced a few hiccups at MIST this year, and a major one was the chaos surrounding the Flag Football competition. We can hear about this from Mr. Sajjad, Mr. Haq, and Mr. Kadiwala. “There were a lot of accusations going around about unfair play between the three teams and two referees. Every single person and team got accused of something, but most of the accusations went to one team, but that team accused everyone else,” said Mr. Haq. Mr. Haq continues to explain how it was “their word against ours”, and due to the confusion, everyone was disqualified and the competition was cancelled. Unfortunately, it seems that Flag Football is no longer in the cards for MIST, at least not anytime soon. It was especially unfortunate as the BHA Flag Football team was doing well, and had a good chance of winning. The next hiccup pertained to the girls basketball team. Made up of girls who were not the school’s official basketball team, BHA’s MIST girls’ basketball team was a bundle of nerves before the competition, but according to one of their members, Hanan Alaiti, they still made long lasting friendships and memories. Ms. Alaiti explained the difficult circumstances of the team, saying, “I think we’ll be fine, but we have two coalitions and neither have shown up, so we’re pretty scared.” After the competition, Ms. Alaiti mentioned that the coalitions ended up working out and everyone got along. However, she did wish that a coach would help out in MIST sports, especially when players are not on the school’s official team. “Without someone guiding us, and pushing us, we just gave up when we wanted to give up.” Believing that future teams could do better with the support and help of a coach, Ms. Alaiti can see a vision for more developed BHA MIST sports teams.
Another unfortunate dilemma appeared as confusion around the Culinary Arts competition. Were they supposed to bake cookies or cupcakes? Ms. Ahmed, a Culinary Arts competitor, mentioned, “It was so weird. Salma [the other competitor for this competition] showed up, and everyone had cupcakes instead of cookies. Just a sea of cupcakes. We got worried and asked what was going on, and apparently, we were looking at the old rulebook that hadn’t been updated yet.” The judges had been sorry, but there was nothing to be done. Both competitors were disqualified from their competitions. This unlucky situation shows the importance of clear communication and updated guidelines in competitions, as well as making sure you’re looking at the right rules. A few weeks before MIST Dallas, when asked about their chances of winning, most competitors replied with an unsteady “Insha’Allah”.
As the moment of truth approached on the day of the MIST Dallas awards ceremony, apprehension was widespread, and for good reason. After all, this would represent the culmination of several months of effort. But BHA MIST truly shined and secured many awards, listed below.
1st place level one Quran Memorization: Osayd Haq
1st place Fashion Design: Masa Darkazally
1st place Prepared Essay: Kulsum Zubair
1st place Science Fair: Wahaj Uddin, Asad Siddiq, Ahmed Sajjad, Yahya Najeeb
1st place Volleyball: Jena Sabagh, Sedra Amhan, Tala Mahmoud, Lyane Sawas, Alaa Tageldin, Fatima Ahmed, Salma Kawaiah
2nd place Digital Art: Jannah Iqbal
2nd place Business Venture: Fatima Aslam, Aish Haq, Sheza Asif, Rehan Nazar, Hamza Siddiquie
2nd place Photography: Laith Hajsaleh
2nd place Esports: Abdul Muhyi Syed
3rd place 2D Art: Inaaya Farooqui
3rd place Extemporaneous Essay: Daanya Maqbool
3rd place Debate: Daanya Maqbool, Fatima Aslam
3rd place Original Oratory: Ahmed Sajjad
3rd place Poetry: Ayoub Oulida
3rd place Math Olympics: Abrar Bashar
3rd place Brothers Improv: Rehan Nazar, Osayd Haq, Nour Akkash, Jawwad Islam, Younus Khan, Ahmad Kadiwala
3rd place Brothers Basketball: Taimur Khan, Abdelmoneim Rahma, Nour Akkash, Ismail Malik, Younus Khan, Bilal Yaqub, Shayan Iqbal, Abrar Bashar, Ismaeel Suleiman.
3rd place Boys Soccer: Laith Hajsaleh, Faris Khatib, Taha Alam, Omar Darkazally, Yahya Aboukhamis, Yahya Najeeb, Asad Siddiq, Rayaan Rai, Wahaj Uddin, Ahmed Idris
4th place Sisters Quran Recitation: Areesha Khan
4th place Original Oratory: Wahaj Uddin
4th place Quiz Bowl: Taha Alam, Faris Khatib, Alaa Tageldin, Khadija Yaqub, Jawaad Billah, Nuaym Zain
4th place Short Film: Nawal Iqbal, Amina Iqbal, Ayra Maalik, Lena Elnager, Aleena Ahmad, Tala Mahmoud
5th place 3D Art: Zainab Tauseef
But any MIST competitor knows that regionals isn’t the end. Rather, it’s just the beginning. At the end of May, MIST announced that its national tournament for 2025 would be occurring in Detroit, Michigan, at Wayne State University. Since the national tournament wouldn’t occur until August, competitors in theory had the whole summer to practice. In reality however, this presented its own unique challenges.
Original Oratory and Science fair competitor Wahaj Uddin shared his thoughts, saying, “Having the whole summer to practice sounds good, but when you start taking into account the fact that people are traveling and participating in summer camps among many other things, you start to realize that it isn’t as easy as it seems. For individual competitors, it can be easy to procrastinate for your competition, and for group competitors, coordinating meetings and practices can be really difficult.”
Despite the many challenges BHA’s MIST Nationals team faced leading up to August, around 30 students departed for Detroit on the Morning of Friday, August 8th. The overall experience of MIST Nationals was described as overwhelmingly positive by BHA’s competitors. It was ultimately the memories made and friendships forged that was the main reason for this.
But in no way did BHA return from MIST Nationals empty handed. Besides placing 1st overall as a region (MIST Dallas), and 4th overall as a school, many individual and group awards were secured by our fantastic competitors!
1st place Quran Recitation: Areesha Khan
1st place Science Fair: Wahaj Uddin, Asad Siddiq, Ahmed Sajjad, Yahya Najeeb
2nd place Digital Art: Jannah Iqbal
3rd place level one Quran Memorization: Osayd Haq
3rd place Extemporaneous Essay: Daanya Maqbool
3rd place Original Oratory: Wahaj Uddin
3rd place Prepared Essay: Kulsum Zubair
4th place 2D Art: Inaaya Farooqui
4th place Boys Basketball: Nour Akkash, Younus Khan, Abdelmoneim Rahma, Abdulhafiz Shelbaya
At the end of it all though, through the victories, defeat, and destiny, we can hear Ms. Alaiti’s stance on this event two weeks after it had ended continue to echo. Even though the emotions have long cooled off, the memories are vivid and live on.
“I think we did amazing. Subhan Allah, we are going to keep up the memories forever. Even after we graduate, and we’re not in the team anymore, not in the school anymore, we still want to keep the habits we built and the friendships we formed.”
The BHA Post extends heartfelt congratulations to our outstanding MIST competitors from last year and wishes the best of luck to this year’s team!