This coming Saturday will be the Large Group Speech Contest in Lake Mills. At around 6:15 a.m., all students involved in speech will begin piling into the bus to head to the competition. Every student has different events that they are involved in and different reasons to be nervous or excited. There are many different group events, such as a readers theatre group performing The Audition, starring Sarah Dodd, Mia Godfrey, Ben Siglin, Anna Godfrey, and Maddi McChesney. There is also a choral reading group performing The Tell Tale Heart, starring Mia Godfrey, Kira Meyer, Keira Nobis, Brianna Sullivan, Hannah Brown, Marcus Buttweiler, Jayden Smith, Caleb Lillquist, and Bryce Kleven. Next is an ensemble group performing Crushed Petunias featuring Keira Nobis and Randy Davenport, as well as a musical theatre duet starring Jenna Lovic and Ben Siglin. Furthermore, there are also two different short films, one featuring Anna Godfrey, Ben Siglin, and Mia Godfrey, and one featuring Jenna Lovic, Noah Mclaughlin, Emily Huckins, Noah Fredericks, Henry Klatt, and Skyler Lee. Finally there are three different Improv groups consisting of one large varsity team-Noah Mclaughlin, Caleb Lillquist, Jayden Smith, and Randy Davenport. One smaller varsity team-Beau Lapointe, Daniel Stephenson, and Margaret Kruse, and an all Freshman team-Erin Foss, Courtney Smith, and Madelin Judkins.
Everyone involved has been diligently practicing over the past few months, and every ounce of their hard work will be culminating into one performance this Saturday. After a long, and early bus ride to Lake Mills, every student will rush to perform at their respective events, or to watch and cheer on their friends’ performance, if time allows. Each student will become a strange mix of tired, terrified, and excited, and an even stranger mix of character and human, performer and person. All performances should conclude by noon, the scores should be posted the same day, and the results of who advances to state should be posted approximately a week afterwards. Each performance is scored on a 1 to 4 scale, a 4 being a disqualification score and a score of 1 earning a spot in state. After an exhausting day of performing, every student will pile back into the bus for a long journey home. Each of them will be tired, relieved, and happy, and each of them hoping that their performances were good enough to make it to state.