This speech season has been quite a success for West this year. From wins, to qualifiers to looking forward to bigger tournaments, Normal West’s speech team has achieved a lot this year.

Very recently, senior Sarah Shaw and sophomore Maggie McHale got second in their individual events at sectionals, sending them to compete in the state competition. At state, Shaw performed an original comedy, and McHale competed in radio speaking.

McHale ended up getting fourth place at the state competition in radio. This was a significant accomplishment for West speech and McHale. McHale expressed how proud she was of her and her team along with the appreciation for her coaches. McHale placing in the competition was important due to her being only a sophomore.

On March 9th and 10th, Normal West is hosting a national qualifier tournament along with Illinois State University. The majority of West’s team is competing in the tournament with some participating in student congress, and some in individual acts. This tournament will be the last of the season if they do not advance.  If our school does advance, they will be competing against other schools around the country in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Nationals take place June 17th to June 23rd.

When asked about the season as a whole so far, Keaton Knuth (10) stated, “Overall I think it went/is going pretty well. We definitely hit a few rough-spots, but in general we made it pretty far.”

The main coach for speech team, Ms. Marvin exclaimed “I’m very excited for all the success we’ve had, especially from a few stand-out sophomores. I anticipate some of our team will make it to Nationals.”

Marvin also explained that the team this year has been relatively smaller than previous years, complicating some performances a bit. She said, due to the size of the team, the individual performances are really shining.

The speech team works extremely hard, practicing nearly everyday. With all the effort put into these performances, we will see how it will pay off in the upcoming national qualifiers.