Speech

I attended my first Minnesota State High School League speech tournament last weekend. When I first started my job at McWest, I was asked to coach the speech team in addition to my duties as drama director. I agreed, though I had no experience with speech team, either as a participant or a coach. I learned a lot over the next couple of years as I coached my relatively small team. I learned the ins and outs of how speech works as an extra-curricular activity, and I learned about each of the 13 categories within speech, and over the years, I've had the opportunity to judge each of the 13. This last fall I became a registered speech (and one-act play) judge, meaning I am now qualified to judge at the sub-section, section, and state levels. My teams have always been small, often under ten, and in good weeks/years, around 12 or 15 members. We've had some success at the sub-section level and have usually sent a handful of kids to the section tournament. (Last year, we had seven people at the section level.) Twice in the previous four years, I've had a student who just missed going to the state tournament, and ended up as an alternate. (The top three finishers in each category go on to state; they were both fourth.) We've never done exceptionally well at meets and invitationals (we go to about six a year) as a team, mostly because we're small, though individuals have had some success. This year, we brought home a team trophy (our first) from the Mankato East Fiesta tournament for finishing third among "small entry schools," a real feat for us. I had one student who brought home trophies from 3 of the 5 meets we went to this year, by finishing 2nd, 1st, and 3rd at different meets. Unfortunately for her, she never made it past subsections this year. However, this year I did have a student who made it to the state tournament. We were quite thrilled with this, and she and I (along with four other members of our team for support) attended the state contest last weekend. She did not do very well at the state tournament, but we were both pleased by the fact that she made it there -- being at state means you are in the top 24 people in your category in the entire state of Minnesota. I've really enjoyed coaching speech, having started five years ago knowing nothing about it, and though the size of my team doesn't seem to grow, I was very proud of their performance this year. Several other members of my team won ribbons and other commendations for their showing at various meets. Although the depths of my heart will always be reserved for the theatre activities (and there's a huge crossover between speech and theatre participants), I really like speech and the progress my teams have made over the last few years.