A few Greene County High School students are getting ready to compete at tomorrow’s Iowa High School Speech Association Individual State contest.

There are four students that will be heading to Adel-DeSoto-Minburn High School on Saturday for the state contest. Those students include Esther Van Horn in prose, Allee Hinote in poetry Eliot Schilling for literary program and Rym Gherari for expository address. Van Horn is performing a piece from The New Yorker called, ‘The Cranberry Sauce Has Something to Say.” She says this story emulates parts of her personality.

“I always like to do fun pieces where I can really engage and usually yell because I’m mad about something. Last year I did one about like a toothbrush being thrown away and he didn’t like it, and this ones basically about how like this cranberry sauce feels like he’s being disrespected at the Thanksgiving table.”   

Hinote is performing a self-written poetry piece called, “It’s Seasonal, Isn’t It?” which is about a girl who isn’t coping well for a friend who is hurt. She describes how unique it is to put yourself out there performing self-written poetry.

“Just kind of makes you more nervous because you don’t know how people are going to react to it. But for reason, I feel like speech judges don’t really like happy pieces, they like the sadder stuff.”

Students who not only earn a Division-I rating at Saturday’s state competition, must also receive a judge’s nomination for the All-State Festival that takes place March 28th at the University of Northern Iowa.