Left to right: Devin Morey, Payton Taylor, and Rhyan Miller

A good number of students from Perry and Adel-DeSoto-Minburn High Schools will be participating in a solo state competition on Saturday.

Perry Speech Coach Mandy Meyers outlines that 14 students were a part of the Iowa High School Speech Association Individual Events District competition on March 1st in Ankeny, and that seven of them advanced to state after receiving Division-I ratings. According to ADM Speech Coach Jacque Seidl, the school featured 32 students in districts with 23 of them receiving Division-1 ratings to go to state. Senior Payton Taylor, who is competing in the Literary Program and is a four-time state qualifier, describes her unique experience she had at the district competition.

“I was actually in Murray for FFA that entire day, so Mrs. (Jacque) Seidl arranged for me to go down to Mount Ayr and speak, which was the closest districts, but it was awesome because her and Brenna (Seidl) came down and surprised me for my speech.”

Sophomore Devin Morey, who will be participating in Expository Address, tells Raccoon Valley Radio that he’s in his first year of speech, and what motivated him to join.

“I was really inspired by the people, I think, because I know that there were a lot of people that were in speech. I also want to be even more involved in the fine arts and I want to hone my speaking skills even more and I thought speech would be a perfect place to do that.”

The 30 students from Perry and ADM will be taking part in the state competition for the Southwest section, being held at Ames High School.