Speech team geared up for season

With an emphasis this year on progress throughout the season, Minneota speech coach Kim Gades has a small but experienced group returning this season.
Minneota opens the season on Saturday, Feb. 4 in Worthington.
The Vikings have 11 students currently on the varsity team with the possibility of bringing some sixth-graders up, too.
Returning this year are seniors Joey Clark in Storytelling and Reagan Bierschenk in Informative; juniors Cora Fischer in Great Speeches and Joe Voit in Extemporaneous Speaking and Humorous; sophomore Wyatt Pohlen in Discussion; freshmen Noah Harms in Humorous, Carson Becker in Extemporaneous Speaking, and Melanie Engels in Storytelling; and eighth grader Amadeus Molina in Discussion.
Everyone back for us this year is competing in their same categories, so that consistency is good," said Gades, who is still without an assistant coach. "We'll be a smaller contingent, but as we proved last year, the size of the team isn't always the top factor."
The team's newcomers this year will be sophomore Jaelin Anderson, who competed in sixth grade before taking a few years off. She will be competing in Extemporaneous Reading. Imogen Moriarty, a seventh-grader, will compete in Poetry.
"The thing I always look for each year is progress," Gades said. "I always want to just see the kids keep pushing themselves to do their best. The awards are nice, but it's more important that these kids are developing an incredibly important skill that they will use the rest of their lives."
The speech students began looking over scripts prior to Christmas and then began practicing after the holiday break.

2023 Minnesota speech team schedule
Feb. 4 - at Worthington Invitational
Feb. 11 - at Luverne Invitational
Feb. 18 - at Redwood Falls Invitational
Feb. 25 - at Marshall Invitational
March 4 - at Montevideo Invitational
March 11 - at SMSU, Marshall
March 18 - at Russell-Tyler-Ruthton Invitational
March 25 - TBD
April 1 - Subsection meet at Minneota
April 15 - Section meet at Redwood Falls

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