22 students head to state speech

Some events featured online.

The Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) will be conducting its 2013 Speech Championships in Kearney on March 21-22. This year’s championships will allow speech fans the opportunity to watch some event performances and all six championship award ceremonies live online.

The University of Nebraska-Kearney campus will host 1,158 students from 224 NSAA member schools over the two-day event. Local high schools including Thayer Central, Deshler, Bruning-Davenport and Shickley will send 22 speech students to the state competition.

Classes A, B and C1 will compete Thursday while Friday’s competition  features C2, D1 and D2 schools. Classes C2 (Thayer Central) and D2 (Bruning-Davenport and Shickley) start at 8 a.m. with first round action. Class D1 (Deshler) begins its opening round at 9:30 a.m. The Class D2 finals are set for 2 p.m. with awards scheduled for 4 p.m. at the Health & Sports Center. The C2 finals are scheduled for 2 and 3:30 p.m. C2 awards are slated for 5 p.m. The Class D1 championship finals begin at 3:30 p.m.  with awards to take place immediately following the C2 ceremony (approximately 5:30 p.m.).

Both Thayer Central and Deshler will send six students from each school this year.

For Thayer Central, seniors Russell Heitmann and John Kyker will compete; Heitmann in persuasive speaking and oral interpretation of poetry, and Kyker in extemporaneous speaking. Juniors Rachel Fangmeier and Caryn Friesen are scheduled to compete in informative public speaking and oral interpretation of poetry respectively. And rounding out the Thayer Central team are sophomores Rachel Heitmann and Robert Dodes who will compete in serious interpretation of prose literature and entertainment speaking respectively.

For Deshler, senior Craig Meyer will compete in humorous interpretation of prose literature and will join freshman Elizabeth Meier in duet acting. Juniors Hannah Lautner and April Maschmann will compete in oral interpretation of poetry and informative public speaking respectively and sophomores Jared Pohlmann and Noah Burger will compete in extemporaneous speaking and entertainment speaking respectively.

Bruning-Davenport will send nine students to the state competition including seven seniors to lead the way. Anthony Ferebee, Shane Heyen, Brenna Meyer and Nolan Schroeder join sophomore Jayden Otto to compete in the oral interpretation of drama division. Meyer will then compete in the informative public speaking division along with classmate Tara Pavelka. Pavelka will also compete in the persuasive speaking division as will incoming freshman McKenna Schardt. Rounding out the B-D team are sophomores Johanna Kluck who will compete in both the serious interpretation of prose literature and oral interpretation of poetry divisions and Christian Rohr who will compete in the extemporaneous speaking division.

Shickley will send one student to the state meet; senior Hannah Coy will compete in the serious interpretation of prose literature division.

Nebraska Educational Television (NET) will again be webcasting the awards ceremonies live each day. Live webcasting, courtesy of Play On Sports, will be produced for the events scheduled in Rooms 238D and 238E of the UNK Student Union each day.

Links to the live performances, the award ceremonies, and final results for all classes and can be found on the NSAA’s speech page:  https://nsaahome.org/sp.php. Final results for publication will be posted immediately following the completion of each award ceremony.