Lawrence High School students Mia Waters and Megan Wisbey pose with their project, “The Chaos of Music after World War I.” The students won 10th place for their project in this week’s National History Day Contest.

When Bishop Seabury Academy sophomore Elisa Trujillo found out Thursday that she’d won first place in this week’s National History Day Contest, her reaction was fitting.

“I was really excited because I never imagined that my project would go so far, and so I ran across the gym and did a little tap dance,” Trujillo said.

Trujillo’s project, “Exploring and Exchanging Rhythms: Master Juba and the Early History of Tap Dance,” won gold in the contest’s senior individual performance category. As part of the honor, Trujillo was awarded $1,000 and named a National Endowment for the Humanities Scholar.

As part of the 42nd annual Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest, more than 600,000 students from around the world competed in five categories: documentaries, exhibits, papers, performances and websites. Less than 1 percent of those entries qualified to compete in the national finals, which were held June 12-16 in Washington, D.C.

Trujillo was one of nine students from Lawrence who qualified for the national finals. She gave her presentation on Wednesday, and found out Thursday that she’d won the top honor for her project.

Trujillo said the fact that she is a dancer herself had a lot to do with her choice of topic. She said though she had taken tap dance and Irish dance for several years, she had limited knowledge of their pasts.

“I felt like I should know more about something that was so connected with my daily life,” Trujillo said. “When I began research I was amazed that they were so interconnected in their histories.”

The focus of her research, Master Juba, was a free black man who lived in an Irish neighborhood in New York in the 1840s. He was thought to be the first person to officially blend traditional Irish and African dance to create tap, Trujillo said. For her performance, Trujillo gave a 10-minute presentation on the topic from Master Juba’s perspective.

“I kind of tell the story through his eyes,” Trujillo said. “There are some lines where I add emphasis by dancing.”

As part of her preparation for the project, Trujillo conducted interviews with a tap historian and did research at Kansas University’s music and dance library. She said one of the things that struck her most was that tap history went so far back, beginning with Irish and African people interacting on the slave ships.

“Because people usually think of Fred Astaire when they think tap dance, all the Hollywood stars, but tap dance began way further back than I would have ever imagined.”

Several other Lawrence students also earned honors for their projects:

For Lawrence High School, Megan Wisbey and Mia Waters were awarded 10th place in the senior group exhibit category for their project, “The Chaos of Music after World War I.”

For Bishop Seabury, two students received awards. Audrey Nguyen-Hoang was awarded ninth place in the junior individual exhibit category for her project, “The Journey of Tomatoes.” Nguyen-Hoang also received the outstanding entry award for the state of Kansas.

Bishop Seabury student Hilary Griggs won the Native American History Prize in the senior individual paper category for her project, “The Chouteau Brothers: Exploration, Encounter, and Exchange in the Eighteenth Century Missouri River Valley.”