Since the start of their season, the Yutan High School speech team members have made an impact on every audience they have performed in front of. Now that the season is over, they are remembering the funny times and laughs they shared.
“My favorite speech was at Speech Night because a lot of people laughed, and it was just fun to do because it was in front of people that I knew,” senior Maddox Wentworth said.
Speech team gives a variety of options for students to pick from, allowing the members to focus on one or more events throughout the season.
“I do a humorous prose, which is basically a comedy. But there’s more that you can do; you can do serious, you can do duet acting, you can do an OID, which is [3-5] people in a group,” sophomore Izaiah Hancock said.
With there being so many different speech events to perform in, there is always something new to learn while being involved in speech, whether that’s dealing with nerves or looking to perfect their public speaking skills.
“Some kids are truly terrified of public speaking, and by doing speech team, you really learn how to deal with those nervous tendencies and to deal with that anxiety in a positive way,” speech coach Alyssa Hansen said. “For kids that are terrified to speak publicly, by the time they’re done with the speech season, they’re not really scared anymore.”
Even for those veteran members, however, the nerves don’t totally go away.
“It heavily depends on your topic, but for persuasive, I have to worry about the emotion on my face, my emotion in my voice and my script,” senior Maddie Fenn said.
Even if someone has fears of public speaking, going out for speech can still be helpful with future jobs and many other parts of adult life.
“Doing speech can help you get out of your comfort zone and just try something new and help you speak in public. And, yeah, there are just many benefits of doing it,” Wentworth said.
As the season started to come to an end, the members of the speech team had more experience in public speaking and performing their speeches, which led to two of the members, Wentworth and Hancock, making it to finals at the district meet.
“We had two students make finals and were close on a few others, although it is always disappointing not to qualify for the state speech meet,” Hansen said. “We’re hopeful for next year!”
Although no one qualified for state, the coaches are hoping this season’s experiences will set students up for success next year.
“Our season was a good growing experience. We had a lot of first-year competitors, so there were some growing pains. Everyone improved and learned a lot about what speech looks like,” Hansen said.
Next season, the coaches plan to set higher expectations and give the members more time to practice.
“We’re going to keep working on building our expectations and we’re going to offer more practice times. We’re also going to try to really encourage kids to take care of little things before we get to districts,” Hansen said.
As the speech team looks back on their season, they feel the excitement of performing and are ready to make the improvements for next season.
“I’ve always thought about performing in front of crowds, and I’m not really that nervous about performing in front of people. So I am really excited to do that again,” Hancock said.
