Speech is a club at the high school that consists of about 41 students. Students aged from seventh grade through twelfth grade are able to join. Speech is coached by Mr. Mark Anderson, Ms. Marcia Anderson, and Ms. Halley Ritscher. 

There are 113 different categories of speech. Those include: creative expression, discussion, series drama, extent reading, extent speaking, great speeches, humorous, informative, original oratory, prose, poetry, storytelling and duo. 

Ms. Anderson said, “I wanted to start coaching because I was in speech in high school.” She started coaching in 1993 for a few years, took a few years off in the middle for her family and then started coaching again a few years ago. 

Ms. Anderson said, “I have been coaching for a total of about 12 years.”

There are five captains on the team, three seniors and two juniors. The senior captains are Kinzie Carlson, Hailey Kjersten and Makenna Hovey.  Idalia Anderson and Elijah Leon are the junior captains this year. Captains help with organizing preseason things like team bonding and during the season they help with vocal warm ups during meets and are leaders for the group. 

Kjersten said, “I really like meets because they are fun and you get to meet new people.” 

Kjersten is in the category of original oratory where she writes a new persuasive speech each year on a different topic and gives that at every meet. 

Kjersten said, “This year my speech is about desensitization to violence on social media.”

The speech team starts practicing in January and they start their meets in February. They have meets until late March and state is in April. Meets take all day as the team has to leave around 6:30 a.m. depending on where they are going and then they last until around 4 p.m. Everyone has to sign up for at least one practice a week for about 20 minutes with one of the coaches. 

Their next competition is a home meet on Sat. March 12 at the Owatonna Middle School.