By Liesl Roorda
Speech Coach
What a week this has been!
With the cancellation of the Saturday, March 14 State Individual and All State Speech contests, Grinnell coach and state contest manager, Kevin Hosbond, passed on some exciting news.
It was that the executive Committee had ok’d individual schools hiring their own panel of judges so that their students could have a platform to perform their pieces they had been working so hard on.
We went to work to see if we could make this work.
Our administration was supportive and we partnered with Tri-County to use the same panel. The judges were at Tri-County in the morning and traveled to Montezuma for our group in the afternoon.
The audience was restricted to only the students and coaches.
Students took on this new challenge with great vigor and put their hearts into their performances.
These heart-based performances resulted in judges after the contest sharing how they really enjoyed seeing an entire teams’ performances and how it gave beautiful insight into the team its culture.
Also, into what is important to each of them through material, vulnerability, and talent.
Results for Saturday’s State Contest Performances:
Niykala Smith, poetry 1,1,1
Rebeka Teumer, acting. 1,1,1
Amanda Armstrong, acting 1,1,1
Haley Roorda, individual improv 1,1,1
Lexi Ferneau, individual improv 2,2,1
Haylie Moore, prose 1,1,2
Felipe Correria, prose 1,1,2
Kailey Shaffer, storytelling 1,1,1
Rayna Hammen, Literary Program 2,2,1
Brayden Stockman, solo musical theatre 1,1,1
Haley Roorda, solo musical theatre 1,1,1
Niykala Smith, solo musical theatre 1,1,1