Several Greene County High School students are traveling Saturday for the Iowa High School Speech Association State Individual contest. 

Junior Bill Wright is the only student that will compete in two categories, including radio broadcasting and expository address. Wright tells Raccoon Valley Radio his expository address is about the history of the US flag and how it came to be. He talks about what started his interest in flags.

“I first became interested in flags when I was like in first grade and I uncovered an atlas with a bunch of flags in it, and I have since memorized the flags of every country in the world, and every state in the US. I have a huge flag collection and I’m using ten of the flags from my collection in my expository address.”  

Senior Bella Linberg earned a Division I-rating at districts for her prose and she talks about her reaction when she made it to state.

“Well I was excited because this is my senior year and I’ve only been doing it (individual speech) for two years, my junior and my senior (years). My junior year I got a (Division) II(-rating), so when I found out that I went to state this year, I was very excited.”

Wright and Linberg will be joined by Gavin Vander Linden in musical theater, Allee Hinote for poetry, Ava Schilling in acting and Esther Van Horn who also qualified for state in prose. The state contest takes place Saturday at Ames High School.