04 November 2011
By Brian Klosa, Speech Instructor
This past weekend the South Central Speech Team competed in the Vocal Viking hosted by Bethany Lutheran College. Sixteen schools from all over the Midwest attended the tournament. Four students attended the tournament and I am happy to say that all four came home with some awards and trophies. Highlights are listed below...
- Rebekah Buege-6th place Persuasion Speaking, 3rd place Prose Interpretation, 3rd place Program Oral Interpretation and 1st place (tournament champion) in Poetry Interpretation.
- Anna Kelley-2nd place Drama Interpretation, 2nd place Poetry Interpretation and 7th place Duo Interpretation (with Ashly Kingery)
- Tess Drager-6th place Prose Interpretation
- Ashly Kingery-7th place Duo Interpretation (with Anna Kelley)
Additionally, Buege finished in 4th place in individual sweepstakes, and with her third place finish in POI she has now qualified that event for our national tournament in April. Our small little squad also won the top community college award and we finished in 5th place as a team in open sweepstakes as well.
I was personally touched by the community college award. This is an award that Bethany Lutheran gives out to pay homage to when that institution use to be a two year school themselves. The director gave a short two minute speech about the difficulties of coaching on a two year level and trying to stay competitive against all the four year schools with their gigantic teams, coaching staffs and budgets. A colleague of mine at Normandale Community College told me awhile back that in the early 80’s there were 16 two year schools in the state of Minnesota who participated quite frequently in college speech. Sadly that number is down to one (us). So while we were the only two year school in attendance at this tournament, I thought the speech and the award were quite generous. It helps to know that support exists for what we do both in the competitive community and within the hallways of our own college.
As always thanks to everyone for their encouragement. Have a happy Halloween!!
Brian Klosa
