Central Speech Team
Have you ever wondered what Speech Team is all about? Coach Laura Hanson explains: In speech students write or pick a piece they would like to perform and then we work on polishing their skills.
Some of speech is like theater: showing emotion in face and voice, differentiating characters, and much of it is just good presentation skills. Not saying "um", not speaking too fast, pronouncing all words clearly, when to change volume or pace, when or how to use pauses effectively, etc.
When a student performs, it is usually in front of a group of 6-8 students and 1 judge (so not a big group). Students can have a script so they don't need to memorize things (though many do, just because we practice the same speech so many times).
There are 13 different categories in MN speech and they have a very wide range so we can find a category to suit anyone. Categories are roughly broken down into 3 groups:
~Interpretation
~Public Address
~Limited prep.
The interpretation categories are all students interpreting a piece that someone else wrote and the categories range from humorous to prose to poetry.
Public Address usually involves writing your own speech and it is usually informative or persuasive. There is also a public address category called discussion where you will work as a group to discuss and solve a task.
Finally the limited prep categories are ones where the students have 30 minutes to prepare their speech and they give a different speech every round. (Don't worry, they have some warning about what they will speak about).
But most importantly, speech is about the team. We work together to increase the skills of each student. The upperclassmen and veteran speakers know what it feels like to get a bad score and they are right there to console and encourage when a teammate is down. We cheer when someone does well, on our team or on others. In a normal season, it's about making friends with students at different schools. Our team likes to "adopt" students to hang out with us if they don't feel comfortable with their own team. One of those students that we adopted now works with me as a coach of another school. I know that my team has really missed seeing their friends.
These students get up on a Saturday morning (bus time is around 6:30 in a normal season) to travel to other schools to speak in front of other people, which is something that most people fear more than death. And they do it well. They are amazing.
The speech team has done a wonderful job adapting to the virtual format this year. They continue to compete and bring home great scores. Some highlights in March were Joe Docken getting 10th place in drama at Dassel Cokato and Avery Lueck getting 6th place at St. Anthony and 1st place at Dassel Cokato in Poetry!
The speech season is almost finished for the year; with just 2 (virtual) meets left. March 27 at Cambridge Isanti and on April 10th we have sections at Maple Lake.
