The speech team won two tournaments so far this season, with a few of its members winning multiple competitions and setting a high standard for the rest of the school year.
The speech team is a public speaking based competition with 14 different categories, ranging from Original Oratory to Special Occasion Speaking. Determined by the number of years in the club, students are sorted into the novice and varsity teams.
In competitions at Reavis High School, Marian Catholic High School, Eisenhower High School, and York Community High School, both the Novice and Varsity teams placed and, in some cases, won the tournament.
The team were tournament champions at Marian Catholic and placed third at Reavis and fourth at York.
The wins were due to the contributions from several different participants, including senior Jonathan Kriarakis, who recently walked away with the top score in two different events, junior Victoria Olaleye, and junior Nia Smith.
Olaeye achieved the top score in her event during the York tournament, and Smith achieved the top score in her event during the Marian tournament.
Last year, Mark Cruse was the only participant to go to State to compete in the Special Occasion Speaking category. The speech team wants to get to State this year in more categories than one.
“My goal for the speech season is to showcase my talent along with my other teammates and to hopefully do well at the same time,” Olaleye said.
The Novice team were tournament championships at Eisenhower, and they placed third at the invitational at H-F.
During both tournaments, senior Jazz Jabulani achieved the highest score in every event, including Original Comedy and Dramatic Duet Acting.
Along with Jabulani, junior Alexander Wallace and sophomore Destiny Garner took home the best score at one tournament and had the second-best score at another.
Wallace and Garner had a Dramatic Duet Acting performance, which is a performance where you oversell the parts that you are playing to make it overdramatized. This performance, along with Humorous Duet Acting, is a very theatre-based category and is usually done by people who have a background in theatre.
“So far, I think I’ve done pretty well because I’ve had past experiences in theatre, but I am always looking to improve,” Jabulani said.
Emotions run high during these tournaments, especially during the first tournament. Emotions range from feeling ready to being filled with fear. Likewise, they all have different ways to handle these emotions.
“Before our first tournament, we regularly went to practice with our coach, but we needed to at least practice our scene two or three times. Just thinking about what was going to happen during our very first tournament was very nerve-racking, luckily I had Alexander to encourage me. If it wasn’t for him to give me those words encouragement we probably wouldn’t have gotten second place,” Garner said.
Wallace agreed, “Being with my partner Destiny and the help of my mentor, Haley Sawyer, I was able to excel at speech and get second place in that tournament.”
The team is just in the beginning stages of their season, and they have a long season ahead before they reach the standard to get to state. Head Coach Janine Stroemer feels that as long as the teams can maintain their concentration, they will be able to go far.
“I think we are off to a good start. We have solid groups in both divisions, so I think that in terms of relativity it’s still new. I am hopeful that as long as we can keep our momentum and focus that we will be in a good place,” Stroemer said.