The Warrior Speech team has been having a successful beginning to their season. They have twenty members on their Speech team. There are nine returning members from last year and eleven new members. Grant Torpin, an Information Applications Technology and Personal Finance teacher, is the new head coach. Before becoming head coach for Speech, Mr. Torpin was an assistant coach for Kearney High School for two years. Returning Assistant Coaches are Hope Pedersen, an Art teacher at Schuyler Elementary School, and Abby Linnerson, a sophomore English teacher at SCHS. The Speech team also welcomed a new assistant coach, Colton Sparh, who is a freshman English teacher.
Mr. Torpin shared that one strength the Speech team has is “passion and team unity.” In any team there is a weakness, according to Mr. Torpin “our weakness is simply our lack of experience.” As the season continues, Mr. Torpin is seeing great improvement on the team week after week. The two students who have received medal so far were Madalyn Mendez 9, who placed fifth place in Novice Poetry, and Alex Aldana 10, who placed second in POI at the Doane Forensics meet on January 6th. POI is the newest event in speech, it stands for “program oral interpretation.” Mr. Torpin shared that “POI is basically where you can pick a topic and then find multiple pieces that can help explain or expand on it.” The SCHS Speech team has welcomed and said goodbye to many members throughout the years. One piece of advice Mr. Torpin would give to future members is to “Simply try out, Speech is something that can be the most fun thing you can do.”
Jazminlett Bernal, a sophomore and second year Speech team member, shared that “So far I have enjoyed how we have great connections with one another.” One goal Jazminlett works on improving this season is her delivery on her presentation. A memory Jazminlett has enjoyed so far during this year’s Speech season is “when Alex Aldana made finals for POI and made me cry during his presentation.” One piece of advice Jazminlett would give future members is to “don’t be scared there are many things to be scared about, so just try out and if you don’t like it, it’s okay.”
