By Jane Berry
Associate Editor- in-Chief
Senior Jacqueline Dunderdale and Junior Ivy Fishman won the district speech competition in their duo event on Saturday, March 3, which qualified both of them to the national competition later in the ear.
Fishman qualified in her individual event, Original Oratory, while Dunderdale did not qualify for her dramatic interpretation. Luckily, they won in duo with their piece, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, qualifying them as a team
“It was a lot of work to pull it together in a week,” Fishman said.

The girls practiced every day after school and during lunch to memorize and choreograph their piece. They were even practicing on the bus to show choir competitions.
Both girls had troubles with the choreography because there are very specific rules. For example, they couldn’t touch or look at each other during the piece.
“It’s only natural to look at the person you are talking to, but we had to break that habit,” Fishman said.
Dunderdale believes that just putting together a complete piece in such a short amount of time was hard because the stakes were so high.
“You would think it would be weird to work with your best friend, that you would get irritated with one another,” Fishman said, “but it [has] been the easiest experience
because we can be more comfortable and up front with each other.”
Speech team coach John Meyers believes the qualifying rounds to nationals would be easy to get relaxed in because they are so different from normal speech competitions, but the girls helped keep each other serious and focused.
“It nice just going with my best friend,” Dunderdale said.
They are both excited to start learning a new piece for the national competition, although they do not know what they will be doing yet.
“Their relationship is going to become very important,” Meyers said, “They will be doing speech team in June and will have to lean on each other a lot because they will not have the rest of the team like they are used to.”
This is the first time Prospect has sent any speech team members to nationals. According to Meyers, because there is a lot of cross over between speech team members and show choir, sending kids to qualify for nationals is more difficult because they are in the heart of their season.
“We sent two and have two champs, so we really could not have asked for a better outcome,” Meyers said.
“Obviously we are excited for the future and hope to place at nationals,” Dunderdale said, “but I know we are going to miss each other a lot when its over.”