Speech and Debate Going Strong

The season for competing for the speech team is almost over for the year. As some of its member’s start to prepare for districts, the others are getting ready for next year and looking back at the successful and fun year that they have had.

Speech competitions have multiple options that you can choose to present to the judges. Everyone seems to think that these speeches are all boring but you can present fun things, short plays, comical speaking, and different types of speaking voices. Dane Psyhos (12) commented, “What most people don’t know about the speech is that it’s fun. The term “speech” doesn’t give the activity any justice and makes it seem boring. The reality is that at speech tournaments there’s a lot of laughter (In some events) and it’s those laughs that make being apart of speech worth every second.”

For Psyhos he will be moving on to districts, “I have performed in many different events this season (Humorous Interpretation, Storytelling, Prose, Radio Speaking, Improvisational Duet Acting) Not every tournament offers the same events so I make sure I’m able to do the most I can at each tournament. The piece that I’ve put the most work into however is “Bedtime Stories (As Told By Our Dad) (Who Messed Them Up)” By: Ed Monk” For others they are preparing the younger members for upcoming years. The speech manager, Abbygayle Quirino (12),  helps everyone improve their piece. The team has overcome some challenges this year “Some challenges to overcome this year would be expanding our events. We mostly stick to IE events [Individual Events], but we have been trying to get into different categories of Debate and Extemporaneous Speaking. But we have also improved this year, each member of our team has broken into finals at least once, and we have started competing against larger schools and have been successful so far, something we wouldn’t dare do in previous years.” Said Quirino. 

Leaving this season, the older members have lots of fun memories from past years. Speech President, Georgia Whalley (12) stated, “Speech has given me a place to feel like I can be myself. When I felt like I had no place to belong in the school, Holland took me in and helped me feel at home here. The most memorable thing from speech was when I went to state for Prose Reading. It was an amazing experience and it furthered my love for speech. In the end, I placed 14th in the state.” Everyone is very proud of what they have accomplished this year and the members always give so much credit to Ms. Holland for supporting them. “Holland is by far the most memorable part of speech. She is the craziest person you’ll ever meet and without her, speech would be a pretty sad activity but probably a little bit more organized.” Added Psyhos. Quirino’s favorite memory was “I have so many memorable things about speech that it’s very hard to choose just one thing, but if I had to, it would be my sophomore year when I came in late to a tournament and my team was so ecstatic to see me that they got the rest of the schools to clap and applaud me.”

All of the students are so glad they joined because they have gained so much knowledge over an extensive amount of topics. Becoming more comfortable in their own skin and standing up in front of a bunch of people and present something they have worked on. There is something for everyone and no new member should be afraid. Improving and having a great year is all included with the speech team.