‘Amazing’ competition at tournament
Competitors aim to be the best at annual Speech Spectacular
MARSHALL– By 8:30 a.m., the final preliminary round of competition at the 19th annual Marshall Speech Spectacular was underway for the more than 800 students participating on Saturday at Marshall High School and Southwest Minnesota State University.
“Round 4, here we go,” Marshall Speech student Amina Ali said.
Ali was among about 30 MHS students taking part in the varsity division and roughly 20 in novice. Ali competed in poetry and advanced to the quarterfinal round, as did 11 other Tiger speech participants. Five additional students broke into the semifinals.
Marshall head coach Rick Purrington said this year marks the first time both divisions compete together for the first four preliminary rounds of competition.
“Varsity and novice compete together and then we separate them after the prelims,” Purrington said. “We decided to do it that way, so the novices can see the varsity speakers more. Otherwise, if they’re competing in their own division, their own separate tournament, they never really see each other. The novices never get to see the best competition, so we thought this was a way to do it.”
Purrington said the top novice participants will still have the opportunity to advance to semifinals and finals.
“They get the best of both worlds,” he said. “While it does scare some of the novices to compete against the best, in speech, we’re not too scared of stuff.”
Students from nearly 35 schools across the Midwest started the first three rounds of competition on Friday. The prestigious event is one of the bid tournaments for the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions.
“It was definitely a long day, but it’s going pretty good,” MHS junior Elise Meseck said. “It’s really fun to have so many different people here. The competition is amazing. We have a lot of incredible students here.”
Meseck is in poetry and extemporaneous reading. She finished as a quarterfinalist in both events at the Speech Spectacular.
“I love poetry,” she said. “You create your own piece using other people’s poems, so it’s very personal and you get to really see into other people’s lives. And in extemp reading, it’s kind of like a fun thing to do on the side. I love reading. I’ve always read to little kids and stuff like that.”
One of the differences between the two is the way Meseck presents the piece to judges.
“Extemp is weird because you don’t get to see the other competition,” Meseck said. “It’s just you and the judge in the room. So personally, I think it went pretty well, but I have no idea who my competition is. So finals is like, ‘Oh, surprise!'”
This year is Meseck’s sixth year in speech.
“I love speech,” she said. “You make a lot of good friends throughout the tournament. You see people from other schools and you’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I saw you last year.’ There are just so many connections and it really helps you build up your confidence.”
MHS senior Nacho Larios said that in addition to the high level of competition, he appreciates that it is a home meet.
“It’s a long tournament, but it’s fun to have it at home,” he said. “That’s really nice.”
Larios participates in humorous and then also in duo with fellow senior Daniel VanKeulen. The duo made the quarterfinals on Saturday.
“We have a humorous piece about Gerald Ford and a taping system that was installed in the Oval Office and he didn’t know about it, so it’s pretty funny,” Larios said. “We re-enact the stuff that he did, the things that were recorded.”
Larios said the tournament had been going well, but he also acknowledged that there were outstanding competitors in attendance.
“We’ve been doing our best, but there’s a lot of good competition,” he said.
The Speech Spectacular is the third opportunity for the Marshall Tigers to compete this season.
“We’ve been doing well with our duo,” VanKeulen said. “It’s just a lot of good competition.”
VanKeulen is also in prose this year. He was a semifinalist in prose on Saturday.
“My prose is about a father who gets a phone call in the middle of the night that his daughter has been hit by a car and is in the hospital,” he said. “So it’s all about this theme of powerlessness and how he can’t control the outcome. It’s really good and has a twist ending. It’s really fun to do. I’ve never done a serious piece before.”
Purrington said some of MHS speech students are at One Act Play, so they weren’t able to be part of the Speech Spectacular experience. A few area students from Minneota and Tracy Area took part in this year’s competition.
Twenty-four students advance to the quarterfinal round, followed by 12 to the semifinals and six to the finals. Purrington said the worst round for each competitor gets dropped, so a lot can change after the fourth round.
“It’s really hard to predict,” he said.
While a couple of inches of snow fell unexpectedly on Saturday morning, Purrington said there was no delay in the Day 2 schedule.
“Everything is on time, although we have teams that have come from a long ways, so we may have issues if one of them decides to go early,” Purrington said. “Every team needs to bring judges with them. If they leave, it would cause a ripple effect for the whole tournament.”
Purrington pointed out that every team is required to bring along some judges, but that Tiger parents and others from around the area help pitch in as 142 judges were needed on Saturday.
“We also have parents who help to feed everybody and there are parents sorting critiques as well,” he said. “There were so many people involved in making this exciting event happen, from our coaching staff to team alumni to over a hundred parents chipping in.”
From a management standpoint, Purrington said Day 1 is the easiest.
“From a tabulation perspective and getting all the scores and everything we need to start eliminating students and advancing others, (Saturday) is the more difficult day,” he said. “It just takes a lot of time and we’re under the gun.”
Along with VanKeulen, Ta’mia Hedlin and Nick Dunn (Duo), Signe Christensen (storytelling) and Astya Black (great speeches) advanced to the varsity semifinals. In addition to Meseck, Ali, and the duo of Larios and VanKeulen, varsity quarterfinalists include: Savannah Boedigheimer (creative expression), David Rabaey (extemporaneous speaking), Noah Dunn (great speeches), Cole Remme (great speeches), Hedlin (humorous), Ashtyn Eben (informative) and Bethany Greathouse (poetry).
“Our team did well against some of the toughest competition in the nation,” Purrington said. “Of the top 100 teams in the nation recognized by the National Speech and Debate Association, 12 of them were here this weekend. What’s most important to me from a competitive standpoint is that our team held its own, but also learned and got better by competing with the best.”
The top team sweepstakes winner was Moorhead, followed by Eastview, East Ridge, Woodbury and Millard North (Omaha, Nebraska).