The speech team took ten pieces to districts, and each one of them earned a one rating, qualifying them for the state speech competition.  Atlantic High School’s speech team traveled to Abraham Lincoln in Council Bluffs on Saturday, Jan. 22. They competed in different divisions including large group, musical theater, radio broadcasting, improv, reader’s theater, and ensemble. 

Junior Alex Garcia participated in musical theater and radio broadcasting. Their radio broadcast piece resembled a podcast. They talked about news and movies. “Our judges enjoyed it,” Garcia said. 

Participants will find out if they made it into the state competition 30 minutes to an hour after they compete. Garcia said, “You don’t compete with others, you just compete with yourself. It is a good way to do your best. It is easy to see others’ emotions in speech.” 

The speech community is all about friendship and supporting each other. “When it comes to speech, you want to support each other,” Garcia said, “It is a nice community with other speech students because they understand [the art of] it.” 

Senior Zii Nath participated in a large group piece with Katy Rothfusz, Genevieve and Eleanor McCalla, Nick Bennett, Brycen Ericksen, and Kami Steffens. They performed a piece called Shuttersome: Tales of Poe, which is composed of two Edgar Allen Poe poems that were made for the reader’s theater.

“I think we worked well together. We only had a few practices together before districts, but those few practices that we did have worked well,” Nath said.