The Exeter-Milligan/Friend Speech Team had a successful season. This year’s team consisted of the following students: Kmila Benitez, Kierra Papik, Logan Krupicka, Tucker Svec, and Babe Weber. Kmila competed in Program of Oral Interpretation (POI), with her piece titled “Our Journey.” Kierra Papik competed in Serious Prose, titled, “I’m Not Okay.” Tucker Svec competed in Humorous Prose, titled, “Sports Athiest.” Babe Weber competed in Persuasive Speaking, writing her own speech titled, “Digital Dystopia: How Technology is Undermining Our World.” The entire team mentioned previously, as well as Logan Krupicka, worked together to compete in an Oral Interpretation of Drama (OID) with the script of “Night of the Livid Dad.” Finally, Kmila and Tucker competed in Duet Acting with their script titled, “Death Comes a Knockin’.”
The speech season started a week later than in years past at High Plains. They then traveled to Thayer Central where each of their events finaled and placed. As the season went on, the team kept working on finding ways to make their performances better and better. This rang true at Conference Speech hosted at HTRS. Kmila, Tucker, and Babe were able to final and place at this competition. The season wrapped up close to home at McCool where the C-2 District Speech Meet was held. Each student competed to the best of their ability in each of their events. When the afternoon came around, Tucker finaled in his Humorous Prose, Kmila finaled in her POI, and they both finaled in their duet. As the award ceremony came around, students were feeling good about the team’s three events which finaled. Tucker’s Humorous Prose, and Tucker and Kmila’s Duet Acting performances each earned 5th place. Though the top three in each event attend state, the team was very excited to hear that Kmila Benitez became the C-2 District Champion in POI. She will be competing in the Nebraska State Speech Tournament on Thursday, March 27. Overall, the EMF speech team had a great season competing and made a lot of memories together.