Smell the roses

There were limbs flailing, voices shifting, and tears falling this past Tuesday, March 24- the Cannon Falls Speech Team was holding their end of the season Community Night. The team’s parents, as well as the rest of Cannon Falls, were invited to come and watch the team members perform their wide range of speeches, from fairy tales to war photography and everything in between. Coach Cal Vande Hoef expresses his satisfaction, saying “Community Night, I thought, was amazing… the parents were just gushing over the team.”

They had reason to rave, as this spectacular night closed out the regular speech season, which ran from the beginning of February until the Saturday prior. The team gave their all, and overpowered their competitors with their numerous successes on their way to the state tournament. Countless individuals enjoyed their victories whether they were getting first, or simply meeting their personal goals for the season. The team grew exponentially in size this year, expanding the number of participants into the eighties. Not only did these multiple individuals have their own aspirations, but the coaches did as well, and Vande Hoef said, “Our goals were to keep the new members, and to maintain the performances of our veteran members.

We wanted to keep everybody, we wanted to coach everybody, but we didn’t want to lose anything else… and at the moment I feel as if we’ve accomplished both of those goals.” And accomplish they did, as members rose to the top of their respective categories, and the team spoke its way into winning the team sweepstakes more than just a few times. These hopes still stay in place as the team advances to the most competitive part of the season now- the race to the MSHSL State Speech Tournament finals on April 17th at Lakeville South High School.

The first level of competition begins this Saturday as the team hosts the MSHSL Subsection tournament here in Cannon Falls. The rest of the season was practice for this portion of the year, which determines whether or not speakers will advance to the section tournament at Byron on April 11th, and from there to State. Coach Vande Hoef isn’t too worried about the road ahead however, as he says, “Sub-sections, sections, and state– what happens there, happens. No matter what happens next, I feel like we were successful and accomplished all of our goals.” The team will just have to travel this long and stressful road together, not stopping to smell the proverbial roses, as they continue their hard work in the hopes that they’ll reach their final goals.