Her heart is racing, her breath is short. Months of hard work and research have culminated in this moment. Palms sweating, then eighth-grader Anushree Dugar steps up into the spotlight to speak to the judges. She knows that what she says here at the state History Day competition may be the difference between going to the national competition and falling short. She nervously opens her mouth and starts to speak …

Flash forward three years. Now a junior, the once-timid eighth-grader is a seasoned veteran of History Day competitions. She has qualified for the national competition three times, won fourth place at nationals in her freshman year, and is president of the school’s history club.

It all started three years ago, when Dugar was in eighth grade at Redwood Middle School. At that time, almost nobody from Redwood had even heard of History Day, let alone participated in it.

“I decided just to try it out,” Dugar said. “My core teacher and I worked together for a really long time [to finish my project].”

Her hard work paid off: her project, a paper about the United States Constitution, made it past the county competition and qualified for the state competition.

“I was surprised that I made it to [the state competition],” Dugar said. “I had spent a lot of time working on my project, but I really did not know what to expect.”

She needn’t have worried. Her project was good enough to make it to the national competition at the University of Maryland.

While she wasn’t able to be present at the awards ceremony, one of the judges called her and told her what he thought of her project.

“I was ecstatic [that the judge called] and told me that my project had won in the state competition. He complimented me on many specific things on my project,” Dugar said. “He said that my paper was the best paper he’d seen. He had a long career so I felt great [about his comments].”

While Dugar’s project did not win any awards at the national competition, Dugar says she enjoyed the process and learned a lot.

“I learned how to conduct research from primary sources, such as newspapers and eyewitness accounts,” Dugar said.

Since doing her first History Day project, Dugar has participated in the History Day competition every year.

Dugar says that there is a big difference between History Day and regular history classes.

“It’s very different [from history class] — in history class you read from a textbook,” Dugar said. “You read what someone else has already analyzed for you. But in History Day, you have to find and gather all the sources yourself and basically write that textbook.”

Sources, says Dugar, are all-important — they can make or break a project. In the final interview portion of the competition, contestants must present to the judges their project and explain where and how they got their information. Judges often appreciate when competitors put extra effort into finding their sources, such as visiting a museum or an archive or conducting interviews with experts.

Dugar goes to great lengths to get sources. To research for this year’s project, a paper on the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill, she went south during the winter break to Santa Barbara for three days to gather information.

“In UC Santa Barbara, there was a huge archive of information,” Dugar said. “There were huge, huge books. There were hundreds of boxes, each containing hundreds of papers, all that was saved in an archive that I could look at.”

Naturally, people have praised her thoroughness and dedication.

“She’s a phenomenal writer to begin with,” said librarian Kevin Heyman, one of Dugar’s two main mentors. “She’s a good researcher on her own, too. She’s a natural-born historian.”

Her other main mentor, history teacher Matt Torrens, also acknowledged her devotion to her work.

“Once she’s gotten a topic [for her project], she’ll get evidence [for it],” Torrens said.

Dugar is also History Club president. Around a dozen students meet in Torrens’ room every Monday for her to share her passion for history with them.

“She’s a great leader of the club, always,” said Torrens, who is also History Club advisor. “She always makes things fun for the kids.”

Dugar plans to pursue history for the rest of high school, and perhaps beyond.

“I’m not exactly sure what I want to major in college,” Dugar said. “But even if I don’t major in history, I’ll try to do something related.”

Dugar hopes others can discover history for themselves.

“History isn’t all just facts and dates. A lot of it is impact — people are affected by history,” Dugar said. “Everything in the past has impacted people today.”