ARLINGTON — Two Arlington High School students took first place in their category in the second annual Washington State Board of Education student video contest.

The online video contest challenged students to create videos highlighting the importance of math, science, technology and career and technical education courses in high school. Videos were evaluated on multiple factors, including content, theme, cinematography, creativity and delivery.

“The winning videos clearly demonstrated the importance of STEM and Career & Technical Education,” said Jeff Vincent, chair of the Washington State Board of Education. “They stood out as exemplary in a host of very impressive entries.”

The contest ran from March 1 through May 2 and garnered 24 entries. Videos were evaluated by three student representatives of the Washington State Board of Education.

AHS seniors Kayti McCluskey-Russo and Claire Logan won first place in the creative category, one of the contest’s two categories, with the other being documentary. The AHS seniors’ video debunking the existence of Bigfoot received the highest score of all the entries and was cited for its use of the scientific method and a diversity of different scenes. Other elements which were singled out for their cleverness in the evaluation included interviews, a search in the woods and a confrontation with a Bigfoot expert who was revealed as dressing up as Bigfoot himself.

“Some great things have gone on recently within our video productions program at Arlington High School,” said Erik Heinz, who teaches English and video production at AHS. “In addition to placing second at the Guerilla Film Festival in Bellingham, we’ve learned that three of our students won prizes, including Flip cameras and iPods, for the ‘Make your Mark’ video contest sponsored by SchoolTube and Balfour. I’m very proud of their accomplishments.”