Leaving for Apple Valley, Minnesota today, the speech team is on their way to their second national level competition of the season this weekend. At the last national competition Glenbrooks in November, the team had three advancing team members:
- Niah Maduakolam, junior, semi-finaled in dramatic interpretation
- Claire Han, junior, placed sixth in extemporaneous speaking
- Addy Ellis, junior, semi-finaled in original oratory
“For being earlier in our season, having advancing team members in the national competition really pushed the team to get in the right mindset for the season,” Addy said. “We have been continuing to focus on our progress through repetition and critiques to prepare for more heated competition.”
The speech team is hoping to continue their success at Apple Valley and as they prepare for their Sectionals competition at the end of the month. Sectionals will determine who on the team will qualify for State in March.
“I am looking forward to finaling in many more competitions,” Richie Andrzejewski, junior, said. “It was exciting when I finaled at the Munster competition since it was my first time competing in radio speaking and I ended up getting sixth place overall out of twenty people.”
The team practices each Tuesday to run mock competition rounds and get feedback from their coaches and teammates. Many members, like senior duo Delaney Craig and Josh Decker, also schedule extra practices with their coaches to further perfect their speeches.
“Our duo shares the message about emotional abuse in relationships, a very important topic in today’s social media age where relationships are fragile,” Delaney said. “For our piece, we work with Mr. O’Drobinak, speech coach, to focus on bringing out the emotion. The message of the piece is important, and speech is a good outlet to share this message.”
