Saturday, February 25, ADM hosted the District Individual Speech competition. Thirty-three schools from our area attended. Speech contestants choose from a variety of categories to determine what their speech will be like. Categories include Storytelling, where a student tells a story without the use of a book and Poetry, where students read a selection of poetry which can be an original poem, poems by other people, one poem or multiple poems. In Original Oratory, students write their own poems that are inspiring or persuasive.

Loren Ritter, a senior, spoke in Original Oratory and Public Address. Her Original Oratory was titled “Hands of a Farmer” and addressed the issue of eminent domain, a topic Ritter has been passionate about since junior year when she had to do a research project. She has been learning about it ever since. She will be attending State with both of her pieces.

ADM is sending 22 speeches to the State Contest on March 11, with sixteen students presenting these. Twenty-five entries were performed from ADM.

Jacqueline Seidl, one of ADM’s speech coaches, noted “Hosting is a lot more challenging. We are in charge of finding the judges, creating the schedule, lining up the food, volunteers, and more.”

Members of speech and the community put in a lot of hard work in order for Saturday to work. Students helped set up rooms, time speeches and make sure people knew where they were to go. Seidl put in many hours to make the contest work; they had 550 entries registered. Although she didn’t see her students perform, she knows they did amazing.

When ADM hosts a contest here, they make money to support the Speech team. We also get to show off our great school. “I had a number of people come up to talk about how nice our facility is and how great our volunteers were,” Seidl noted.

Mariel Jones, who is not in Speech but attended the competition, found the musical theatre acts the most entertaining. “I thought it was set up well and it was easy to find the centers I was looking for,” Jones stated.

Sally Evoy, a junior, performed a Prose piece with excerpts from Looking for Alaska by John Greene. She received a II rating. Evoy stated “It was fun having a contest at ADM because I wasn’t stressed about getting lost or finding my center.

Students who received I ratings will attend State Speech at Johnston March 11.

Time is a little different in individuals. They give each section time, but individual performance times. For example, Emily Pottebaum is the 8th performer in the 8:00 section (meaning she’ll perform closer to 9:30).

A donation of $3 is encouraged but not required for entrance to the competitions.