Five Moriarty teens who competed at the state competition for National History Day took home gold medals.

The Moriarty teen winners are Ashley Page and Elizabeth Montano — First Place in Senior Group Documentaries, Kolene Winn and Alicia Page — First in Junior Group Documentaries, and Peter Brown — First Place in Junior Individual Performance.

The National History Day contest is a program of the New Mexico Humanities Council, and was held on April 24 at the Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque where 327 middle high and high school students competed. The first and second place winners from each of 16 categories are now eligible to compete at the national level at the University of Maryland in College Park, Md. in June.

What makes the Moriarty teens, ages 13-16, unique is that they prepared National History Day projects, using college-level research methods, on their own time.

The five young people not only keep up high grades in school and participate in a plethora of extracurricular activities, but they used their free time to do serious academic work. Most of their competitors, from around the state, prepared projects as a part of their school curriculum. Although a lot of work is done at home by all winning participants, others were given classroom time and support to research and write their projects.

"This program requires serious, and sometimes tedious, work. I estimate that our Moriarty kids each spent from 200-400 hours of work preparing these projects," said Amy Page, mother of two winning students and a teacher-in-training at New Mexico Highlands University.

Page has been the promoter for National History Day in rural Moriarty. For her efforts in encouraging the program and guiding independent work, she received a Teacher of the Year award at the awards ceremony last Friday.

"I am so proud of the kids. It came as a complete surprise to receive an award, too," Page said.

Besides their work on History Day projects, two of these young people are year-round athletes, two perform in choirs, two are 4-H members, one is a student council leader and leader in Students for Social Justice and one teen participated in the Regional Science Fair this year.

"It was a lot of work, but it was worth it. There were a lot of special things about doing this," says Alicia Page, age 13. She and Kolene Winn, 14, did a documentary about Alice King, wife of former Gov. Bruce King, whose work led to the creation of the N.M. Children's Code and the nation's first Children, Youth and Families Department.

The teens presented their documentary at a recent Moriarty School Board meeting. The former governor was on hand for the event and many in the room were teary-eyed after viewing the program. Alice King died on Dec. 7, 2008.