State Speech Meet!

I participated in the State Class A speech tournament on April 15, 2011.  I compete in Humorous Interpretation and I have been doing a piece called "Pippi Goes to School," from Astrid Lindgren's "Pippi Longstocking."  I had a wonderful experience at the meet and ended the day in a 3 way tie for 8th place.  The top 8 speakers move on to finals, however, I lost the tie breaker and ended up officially in 9th place.   It was a great end to a super speech season.

One of the neat things about the state speech meet is that speakers get to see friends from across the state that they rarely see.  Last summer I attended the Gustavus Adolphus College Summer Speech Institute run by their head coach, Kris Kracht.  This camp boasts that 55% of their participants qualify for the state meet.  I attended camp with my 3 oldest brothers and of the four of us, three made it to state, so we are very thankful for his help and the skills that his camp brought to us. 

We ran into lots of speakers and coaches from other schools that we don't often see year round so that was an added bonus.  We got to visit with coaches such as Jill Lofald (Duluth), Travis Hill (Duluth), Stuart Wilson (Walker), Tom Lucas (Bemidji), Kristine and Sam Gruenberg (East Grand Forks), Jason Olson (Adrian), Travis Rother (Chanhassen), ShellRae Vedbraaten (Melrose), and many more.  I caught up with lots of speech friends, too, such as Kenzi Kovar (Perham), Cade Shelton (Fairmont), Lexi Randall (East Grand Forks), Ruben Flores (East Grand Forks), Brent Gulbranson (East Grand Forks), Cody Knutson (East Grand Forks), Jason Dennis (Park Rapids), Luke Swenson (Park Rapids), Sara Schultz (Park Rapids), Krysten Nelson (Roseau), Jon Tsen (Park Christian- Moorhead), Matthew Jedlicka (Blackduck), Ian Anderson (Blackduck), Carl Cronin (Milaca), Laramie Jackson (Eagle Valley-Eagle Bend), and many, many more.  I also ran into several former speech competitors who came back to watch the meet and connect with friends, such as Jon Dahl (Roseau), Amanda Fredrickson (Roseau), Antonia Perez (Roseau), McKenna Jones (East Grand Forks) and others.  Its also very cool to watch the other talented speakers perform and pick up many new techniques and skills.  That goes a long way towards preparing for next year....  Hope to be here again!

Just for flavor, here is a video of my "Pippi" Humorous Interp. that I used for practice with my coaches.