Two of NV’s speech entries qualify for All-State

Nodaway Valley’s speech students wrapped up a successful individual speech season Saturday, March 15 when they competed in the state contest, hosted by Ames High School.

The speech team had 13 entries to the state contest. Of these, many received Division I ratings. Additionally, a spontaneous speaking piece by Paul Kading and an original oratory piece by Melanie Kilborn were both selected to perform at all-state, scheduled for March 31 at the University of Northern Iowa.

From start to finish, the individual speech students collected strong ratings wherever they went. They competed twice at CAM, once in the Walnut Hill Invitational there and another time at the district contest. They also competed in the Pride of Iowa Conference Contest at Wayne.

“We had a lot of people do really well over a lot of different events,” Kading said.

At POI, the team had outstanding performers in Kacie Ford in acting and reviewing, Caroline Britten in public address and Kilborn in poetry.

Kilborn qualified for state in two events.

“I did original oratory, which is a persuasive speech, and interperative poetry as well. I liked having two events because they both had different aspects,” Kilborn said. “In one I had to focus on my own writing while in the other I had to focus on acting and someone else’s work.”

The possibilities are endless when finding pieces to perform for speech. A few examples include:

• Britten’s public address piece is a high school graduation piece called “You are Not Special”

• Delaney Blomme’s storytelling piece is an emotional tale about a child growing up called “Love You Forever”

• Josh Cronk performed “Don’t Let Me Go” from the musical “Shrek” as part of musical theater

• Kading competed in radio news, forming a newscast from stories that were provided, and spontaneous speaking, covering the topic of the role of the arts in schools

Additionally, senior Carter Osborne made it to state in individual speech for Orient-Macksburg.

Two out of three judges have to nominate an entry for all-state.

Head speech coach Lauren Ernst is proud of how well the speech season went, both individually and back in the large group season. Her assistant coaches are Sam Grubisich and Brenda Plymesser.

“I feel like the season went very well as a whole. Our team is very young, based on experience. All three seniors we had had very little experience. Josh had the most with two years under his belt, otherwise the other two, this was their first year,” Ernst said. “They work really well as a team, respect each other and support each other. We had a lot of snow days this year and had to cancel some practices, but they are always willing to work on their own and make themselves better.