STATE UPDATES · Summer 2026 · Torch: U.S.
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Illinois
"Salvete omnes!
This month, the ILJCL board has been very busy preparing for nationals! We are excited to hopefully bring back former T-shirt designs for Agora and as always sell lots of our famous Helio-Gobble-Gobble-Us T-shirts (The purple turkey shirts!). The Illinois JCL also recently hosted its 63rd State Convention on February 19-21! At convention, we were lucky enough to have Joe Goodkin perform songs from his album The Blues of Achilles! We had a very successful service project; we made dog toys out of old T-shirts! Cooper Jurgeleit, our former communications coordinator, was also pied in the face during General Assembly for his Coin Wars punishment.
After state convention, we had another Certamen match in March and then concluded our Certamen season with the Illinois Certamen League finals. Among the schools that placed for advanced ICL finals were Loyola, Northside, and New Trier. This year, we decided to create a writing contest for the Ides of March, which went wonderfully! The ILJCL board also had so much fun with Classics Week posts on our ILJCL Instagram account.
Our other board project has been our ILJCL Podcast. We put out two episodes before state convention, but we have dramatically increased the number of episodes since then! It has been such a joy to get to know officers from other state JCLs. Thank you Wisconsin for being our first episode! We are so thankful for everyone who has appeared on our podcast and can’t wait to keep making more episodes! (More information about our podcast is in the advertisement section!) The ILJCL board is eagerly awaiting nationals, and we hope to see you all there!"
By Sarah Pati
By Sophia Hill
Indiana
"With summer coming up, Indiana could not be more excited! After closing out state convention at IU in March, we’re ecstatic to come back to Bloomington in July for national convention! Indiana delegates are ready to help at convention and are already participating in national committees to help give a warm Indiana welcome! We hope to see everyone from all over the country come for a week of classics-filled fun in The Hoosier State while you take in the beautiful scenery of IUB. For Indiana, the spring has been quite eventful. In March, we held state convention and installed the new 2026-2027 IJCL Officers all while having tons of fun in spirit, graphic arts, creative arts, and much more! In April, we wrapped up the year with the new addition of Leadership Growth Day which will replace Leadership Development Academy in the fall. Students participated in breakout sessions, learned about nationals, got to learn about what it means to be a leader, and closed out the year with forming new ideas about the future of their clubs. Finally, in May, the new 2026-2027 board met to discuss the year ahead. See you all at nats!"