Speech is competitive public speaking activty with many categories, including interpreting an already written piece and a self-written piece.  Many tournaments include students are scored in 3 rounds and based on those scores students may advance to finals.

Speech began in early December, with meets staring in January. Speech is new this school year and practices are different from other sports or activities.

“Monday is a team practice where based on the last meet we were at last Saturday and we look at the general critiques,” Tai Warnke said, a senior at Spectrum.

Every so often practices change after they go to a meet on the weekends.

“We just kinda gather together and debrief what happened at our last tournament and things to add to your performances,” Lyla Mack said, freshman at Spectrum. 

There are ways to prepare for a big competition like a meet. For example, Tai Warnke stated,

“The biggest thing I do is I like to run through my speech the night before.”

Team environments is important for any activity and the Speech team is not different.

“During the team practices we do a lot of watching each other and critiquing on each others pieces so that what one person is learning can be applied to everyone and that builds a sense of camaraderie between them,” the speech team coach, Terry Warnke said.

It is not all competition environment.

“We all get along really well, everything we do together is really fun, ” Mack said.

 

 

Since there are many categories it may be difficult to choose what you do. Fortunately, Terry Warnke has figured that out.

“We did auditions at the beginning of the season to get a sense for what categories fit, some of it was in conversation with the students and they told me if they wanted to write something or do something that someone else has created,” said Terry Warnke. 

The introduction of speech has brought an home away from home to students on the team. So far, it has been very successful.