Greene County and Paton-Churdan Speech Teams are competing today at the Iowa High School Speech Association State Large Group Contest.

For Greene County, there are three entries, including Choral Reading, Group Improv and Musical Theatre, and nine students that are performing. Senior Evelyn Snyder is in her third year of Choral Reading and she talks about her expectations for the state contest.

“I expect to perform pretty well. Hopefully we do pretty good. I don’t know if we’ll get a I(-Rating) cause we never have before, but you never know, maybe we’ll be shocked.” 

As for Paton-Churdan, there is one entry, Choral Reading, that has ten students. Speech Coach Amanda Tasler is the author of the performance, called “Let Your Light Shine” that honors the memory of their late secretary, Heather Lansman, who passed away unexpectedly last year. She tells Raccoon Valley Radio that there were different versions of what she wanted the students to do and ultimately they landed on a more dramatic piece.

Tasler explains why the group wanted to move forward with what they took to the district contest that qualified them for today’s state competition.

“Well, I felt it was important to do this piece because I feel like the students have been pretty resilient and adapted well to our new normal, and I wanted to give them some acknowledgement for that. I allowed them to also add some of their personal touches to the script. On the back of our script, we also have pictures, different pictures of Heather (and) they could send me pictures that they wanted to include for the back of their scripts also.”     

Both speech teams are at West Des Moines Valley High School. According to IHSSA, to be selected for the All-State Festival, entries must not only get a Division I-Rating, but be nominated by the room judges as well.