Seven students are representing the school in the annual Shooting Stars program sponsored by the Arts Council of Johnson County.

The Shooting Stars is a scholarship competition, started in 1997, open to seniors involved with the arts. Seniors become eligible to apply when they are nominated by one of their arts teachers, but each school can only nominate one student per category.

Applications are then sent to the Arts Council to determine if students qualify to be a finalist for the competition.

These finalists are Emma Nicholson, nominated for Literature; Isaiah Reasby, production & design; Alexis McGee-Dinvaut, photography; Liam Chewning, theater performance; Nathan Brown, three-dimensional art; Kahill Perkins, two-dimensional art; and Kaeli Whitener, voice classical.

Each application process is different. After Nicholson was “accepted back in October,” she had to submit a resume along with either three poems 30 lines long or two prose pieces, she said. Nicholson submitted three poems.

Reasby applied in the hopes that he would get an interview, which he got. He prepared an “8-10-minute-long presentation [with a] PowerPoint and three bulletin boards of three different” styles of lighting fixtures that could potentially be used in a theater setting, he said.

Finalists in photography, three-dimensional art and two-dimensional art will be on exhibit March 26 at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art.

A gala will be held later that evening to introduce all 104 finalists and to announce the first and second place winners in each of the nine categories.

First place winners will receive $1,400, and second place winners will receive $700 in scholarships.