By Nabi Dressler
News Editor
Junior Varsity speech team placed third overall out of 16 schools at John Hersey High School today. Prospect placed in all of the 13 events in which they participated.
John Meyers, one of five speech team coaches, was very happy with the team’s performance, especially because about half of the team is in the winter play; they have to juggle two time-consuming schedules. These students returned to Prospect’s theater after the tournament to do “act two” of the day.
The speech team missed second place by one point. Hinsdale Central took the first place trophy, with Prospect trailing behind by just 17 points.
There were first place finishes brought home by freshman Stephanie Kopp in Dramatic Interpretation, sophomore Lauren Bell in Humorous Interpretation, freshman Elli Furukawa in Oratorical Declamation, freshman Allie O’Connor Original Oratory and freshman Claudia Lowe in Special Occasion Speaking.
Kopp didn’t think she was going to place, let alone get first.
“I was like, ‘What!? What’s going on?'” Kopp said.
Kopp spent about two hours a week preparing her speech. She thinks speech takes a lot of time, but she loves it.
This was Kopp’s third-ever speech competition. She acknowledged the season has been crazy for her so far. She also placed first in Dramatic Interpretation at her second competition.
The best team outcome of the season was two weeks ago, when Prospect took first place at Conant High School. According to Meyers, this tournament was tougher and there were better individual scores today.
“What you have to do to start taking team trophies is….have a lot of people taking firsts,” Meyers said. “A lot of individual success turns into team success.”
Individual preparation for speech tournaments takes place after school throughout the week. Students are one-on-one with a coach, who critique their performance and teach them how to improve.
According to Meyers, most students don’t just come to tournaments and “talk off the top of their head.” There is a lot of time put in before the actual competition in order to receive such high finishes.
The students on speech team have been very successful so far this season, both as individuals and, consequently, as a whole.
