By Kennedy Kleinschmidt
The Aurora Speech team finished their second meet of the season, with novice humorous speaker Shawn Morris crowned speaker of the week.
Morris has already shown strong potential as a speaker for Aurora, with his first-place finish at the initial Adams Central meet. With this CNFL victory, a much bigger contest than Adams Central, the freshman now has two first-place finishes under his belt.
“CNFL is a much bigger contest,” speech coach Keli Margritz said. “Even though it is only our second tournament of the year, everyone knew what their job was and continued to carry themselves in a classy, professional manner.” The meet tallies around 350 entries, making this a much bigger contest and even harder to place in the top 15 of each event.
Newcomer Julia Messere had a good start to her season, placing first in novice extemp speaking. Messere is a transfer student for Aurora, previously competing in speech at GICC. Because she transferred halfway through the year, NSAA rules dictate that she cannot compete in varsity speech events. However, she is still competing for Aurora in novice, planning to perform in varsity her senior year. Other freshmen performers, Charlee Wiesen, Ellie Springer, and Joey Ballas, all did well, placing in the top ten in their respective events of serious speaking, persuasive speaking, and duet acting.
“We’re at the very beginning of our season,” junior Jessia Rodriguez said. “But the next thing a lot of us are working on is memorization.” Rodriguez placed fifth overall in varsity entertainment speaking, and junior Scott Bennett placed seventh in the same event. Other notable varsity performers, junior Lean Groetzinger, senior Kennedy Kleinschmidt, and sophomore Amie Sharp, placed in the top 15 in humorous, program of interpretation, extemp, persuasive, and poetry events. Some names to look out for include Scott Bennett, Lena Groetzinger, Jorja Pohlmeier, and Kennedy Kleinschmidt, all competing in the state competition last year.
The team placed fifth out of 23 schools, scoring 148 total points. Looking forward to next week, the team will have fewer members competing, with some performers attending the show choir competition instead. The Aurora Huskies will open up their third season meet in Doniphan Trumbull, where 19 entries will compete.