By Khrystyna Halatyma
Staff Writer
The Prospect speech team will be competing with over 75 different schools from all over the state of Illinois in 14 events. The speech team leaves today, Friday, Jan. 21, at 11 a.m. for Downers Grove South High School and the “biggest tournament of the year next to the state series,” according to coach Stephen Colella.
Each school is only allowed to bring two competitors for every event, meaning that the coaches could not take the whole team, which consists of 80 students. They had to choose two teams of 14 students for the tournament.
“This tournaments is a bloodbath,” Colella said. “[It’s] really really hard.”
The tournament will begin with round one on Friday night. This round will consist of 14 events with about 150 students competing in each event, lasting about an hour.
“The atmosphere is pretty spectacular. All the performers wear suits, so they look very very professional,” Colella said. “Everybody’s there; it’s just a very professional atmosphere. Everyone is very focused at these tournaments and is very competitive.”
To get to the final round and be considered as one of the top six out of 150 competitors, the students must pass all three rounds and, because of the size of the tournament, an extra preliminary final round.
“Speech team is one of those things where you go in while it’s dark and then you leave when it’s dark, so we don’t see daylight on Saturday,” Colella said.
The team will get up Saturday morning at 5 a.m. to finish the second and third rounds before noon. During each round the students are in a classroom with their judge and six other competitors.
“It’s just kind of intimidating that you’re presenting up in front of people you don’t know, but it’s just something to get used to,”​ said junior Sara Brumm, one of the leaders of the team.
Brumm will be competing in Original Oratory, a problem/solution speech about finding your self worth.
“When you get nervous, you tend to forget your speech — at least I do — so that’s why I try just to calm down,” Brumm said. “It’s like [you] learn relaxation skills in speech team.”
The final round will last about an hour, consisting of only the top six students competing for the top spot.
“We expect a lot of success this year​. We have a lot if really good hard-working kids on our team,” Colella said.