This weekend is the Iowa High School Speech Association Large Group All-State Festival.

Four Greene County High School students were nominated for the honor in radio news with senior Arthur Bardole, juniors Kassi Lamoureux and Ashlee Harmeyer and sophomore Justice Phillips. Their program is 97.7 KOOB and it starts as a regular broadcast, but then the apocalypse happens and eventually Bardole is abducted by aliens.

Harmeyer, who does a commercial selling weapons at a retail store in the program to survive the apocalypse, describes her reaction when she found out she made it to all-state.

“Well I was pretty shocked because I’ve never been apart of radio news and since we recorded it a long time ago it seems like, I found out later and so I forgot how funny it was I guess.”

Phillips, who plays a meteorologist,  looks back when they first put together the entire recording of the broadcast.

“When we were at the studio, when we were finally getting it put together, and we were putting in the sound effects and everything, I was kind of excited because I thought it was really good. So I thought it would go at least to state or something. I was pretty proud of it and I think everyone else was too.”

Lamoureux says she’s looking forward to hearing other radio news performances because she’s never been able to before, even going back to last year.

“Last year my sister Kirsten, my sister Regan and I all did one with Arthur and his brother. That was super fun too. And we always make them really funny. So I’m excited to see if other people are serious about it or if theirs are funny too. I don’t even know.”

Greene County is scheduled to perform around 11:04am Saturday at the Scheman Building on the Iowa State University campus in Ames.