The 2012 Alliance High School Speech Team had a total of 23 students who competed in 7 speech meets including State. AHS English teacher Mrs. Jill Hoesing and speech teacher Mrs. Mary Theresa Green proudly sent 5 of their speech team members off to compete at the state level on March 22.
Of the team Mrs.Hoesing said, “We were a very young team that jumped right in and competed at a varsity level this year. We saw great growth in the experience of our team and look forward to next year. One of the speech teams biggest accomplishment was the improvement the team made as a young team.”
State speech qualifiers included senior Brianne Hoesing, in Informative and Duet, the Oral Interpretation of Drama group including juniors Saige Benton and Kacy Horn, sophomore Roger Bunnell, and freshmen Collin Cox. Roger Bunnell also competed in Serious Prose. In addition, senior Delta Wilson reached finals in both of her competing events, but, unfortunately, received a fourth place title when the State qualifying place was third place. Wilson joined the state qualifiers in Kearney, Nebraska, and supported the team there.
This year there were three seniors in Speech, including, Brianne Hoesing, Delta Wilson, and Miranda McDonold. Delta Wilson says, “I was in speech all four years of high school. I qualified for State my sophomore year in persuasive, but I didn’t break finals. One thing I have learned is that one person’s opinion one day doesn’t define my life, just because a judge liked someone better doesn’t mean it’s the end of the world.”
Miranda McDonold joined Speech team her sophomore and said that without joining speech, she would have never been able to open up to people.
Brianne Hoesing has been a speech team member for 6 years and has qualified for State 3 of those years and received 6th place in State her senior year in Informative speaking. She says, “I have learned poise, and how to take constructive criticism. Teamwork and hard work. I also learned that the more I listened to my mother (Jill Hoesing) the better I did.”
Of the team Mrs. Green says, “We are very proud of the outstanding job our students did and of how hard the students worked with each coach, I really hope next year we receive more extemporaneous speakers to compete!”
