Submitted Photo Dunkirk High School students are pictured backstage.

Dunkirk High School won “Outstanding Costume Design” for its production of “Little Shop of Horrors” at this year’s Kenny Awards.

Presented by Shea’s Performing Arts Center and The Lipke Foundation, the Kenny Awards recognizes the talent, dedication, and efforts of high school youth in Western New York for musical productions.

Dunkirk was the only school in Chautauqua County to win any category at this year’s Kenny Awards.

Starpoint High School won the Outstanding Musical Production for “Mary Poppins.” Other categories Starpoint won included Outstanding Actor in a Leading Role, Outstanding Actor in a Supporting Role, Outstanding Actress in a Supporting Role, Outstanding Dance Performance, Outstanding Dramatic Performance and Outstanding Technical Design.

Other winning schools included West Seneca West, Lewiston Porter High School, Buffalo Academy for the Visual and Performing Arts, St. Joseph’s Collegiate Institute, Tonawanda High School and Eden Jr./Sr. High School.

This is the first time Dunkirk has won a Kenny Award.

In 2017, Maple Grove High School won the overall Outstanding Musical Production for “Anything Goes.”In 2016, Fredonia High School’s “Aida” won two Kenny Awards for Outstanding Technical Design and Outstanding Costume Design.

This year, Dunkirk was up for five categories. Forestville High School was the only other area school that was nominated. Its production of “Disney’s Beauty and the Beast” was up for four categories.

Students from all the schools were in attendance Saturday at Shea’s when the award winners were announced.

Applications for this year’s Kenny Awards program were accepted in October and reviewed by the panel of Kenny adjudicators.

The Kenny Awards is one of 40 regional awards programs nationwide participating in the National High School Musical Awards Program, also known as The Jimmy Awards, which allows the selected Outstanding Leading Actress and Actor of the Kenny Awards to win an all-expenses-paid, week-long trip to New York City to compete in the National High School Musical Theatre Awards in June 2018.

The Kenny adjudicators viewed and evaluated the productions and determined the nominees and winners based on what they saw. There were 15 award categories, including “The Kenny” for Outstanding Musical Production in which the winning school receives a $5,000 grant from the Lipke Foundation to be used solely by the school’s theatre department.