After a week delay, the District Large Group Speech Contest was finally held this past Saturday at Perry High School.
Both the host school’s team and the Adel-DeSoto-Minburn team performed very well at the event, and they are each sending several entries to the State Contest at West Des Moines – Valley High School this Saturday. Perry had six of their 12 entries advance, including three ensemble acting pieces, a short film, reader’s theater, and a group improv team. ADM had six of 19 make it to state, including their freshman reader’s theater piece, as well as varsity reader’s theater, choral reading, one act play, group mime, and TV news.
Perry Speech Coach Wendy Bollhoefer said her teams were ready in spite of the delays, and she was pleased with how they were able to adjust to hosting the contest on a different day than they were expecting. She doesn’t anticipate changing much this week ahead of state, apart from making small alterations based on the feedback from judges. ADM Speech Coach Jacque Seidl said she was proud of her students’ performances, but felt they were thrown off by the changing schedule. As a result, she said there is much to be done this week to get the pieces that advanced “State Ready.”
“Usually we take some of our practice times and we make them a little bit shorter, and we just really run the piece two or three times then leave. We don’t have that luxury this week, so we’re keeping our longer practices. They know we need this time to really dive into what the judges said from districts and be able to make some of those adjustments. So hopefully, fingers-crossed, no cold weather days that we can’t meet, because we really need to be able to meet and make some of those modifications.”
To learn more about large group speech contest, listen to tomorrow’s Perry Fareway Let’s Talk Dallas County program on air and at RaccoonValleyRadio.com. See below for a full list of the Perry and ADM entries that advanced to state.
Perry:
Ensemble Acting: “Alien Baby”
Dannah Karolus and Kaylynn Bousman
Short Film: “Time Crunch”
Jamileth Sarceno, Jessica Ortiz, Fatima Hurtado, Kasandra Medina, Jocelyn Fuentes, Kitzya Soto, and Alondra Avila
Reader’s Theater: “Inside a Team Mind”
Camden Studer, Rylynn Gilmore, Kayla McFarland, and Madison Mason
Ensemble Acting: “Antidepressants”
Julia Stetzel and Fatima Rodriguez
Ensemble Acting: “14 More Ways to Screw Up Your College Interview”
Kayla McFarland, Allie Taggart, and Adriana Eastman
Group Improv
Camden Studer, Rylynn Gilmore, and Trinity Summerson
ADM:
Freshman Reader’s Theatre: To Those Who Inspire Us
Christine Aukes, Chloe Menneke, Callie Hazel, Jena Lockard, Hailey Buehlman, Rian Brewer-Hawbaker, Lilah Hegarty, and Audra Love
Varsity Readers Theatre: Dear Dealer
Amber Gering, Olivia Klassen, Brayden Chase, Patrick Origer, Steven Dobrinski, Karly Dittert, Seth Entriken, Niki Seaholm, Paige Weesner, Rachel Hardy, Sydney Pottebaum, Emma MacAdon, Grace Hatchitt, Marissa Dorr, and Kenna Wheeler
Choral Reading “A Guide to Camping”
Nathan Wedemeyer, Konnor Chase, Parker DePond, Caden Roling, Aaron Crow, Heidi Olson, Kam Majewski, Lauren Logue, Lida Asilyan, Mikki VerWoert, Zoe Marckmann, Anna Walls, and Addison Hazel
One Act: The Game
Abby Embree, Kale Kester, Sean Whitson, Sarena Gibson, and Konnor Chase
Group Mime: Shattered Dreams
Paige Weesner, Niki Seaholm, Bryce Greer, and Nathan Wedemeyer
TV news: The 80’s Special
Brad Freiermuth, Braeden Hagerty, Noah Kahler, Cody Anderson, Tom Boorn, Addison Hazel, Caden Mager, Justin Schumacker, and Zach Fuller