On February 4th, Cannon Falls hosted an invitational speech tournament, which was the first tournament the Cannon Falls speech team participated in this year.

The Cannon Falls speech team arrived at school at 7:30 and brought the food they were assigned into the art room — this food was for the judges and officials to eat as a thanks for keeping the tournament running. At around 8 a.m., the members got together and warmed up by saying their regular phrases like “Unique New York” and “Red Leather, Yellow Leather” and a repeat-after-me song to loosen and awaken their bodies and brains. After the warmups, the people who were competing at the elementary walk together as the others prepare for their first round in the high school. The speech teams performed at both the high school and the elementary school.

First round started at 9:15. Each competitor prepared their speech before the first round, where they competed in a room of five to seven people. Each room had a judge that ranked the competitors and gave critiques on how to make the speaker’s speech better. There was a total of three rounds, each like the first. However, each round they have different competitors, judges, rooms, and speaking order. After each round, the speechies returned to “camp” — the cafeteria — where they could eat or socialize and prepare for the next round.  The judges will rank the competitors in each round. The higher the rank, the higher their chances of placing well. “The competition went better than I expected,” first-year speech competitor Joanna Wu in Original Oratory, commented.

The awards ceremony was supposed to be held at 2:15, however, the officials were able to add up the scores quickly and the awards started early. The Cannon Falls Speech Team placed second, three points behind Cotter School. 27 speech competitors from Cannon Falls placed, with six first-place awards: Grace Miller in Extemporaneous Reading, Tristin Qualey in Poetry, Teagan Strecker in Discussion, and Cannon Quade in Humorous placed first for varsity. Additionally, first-place novice awards went to Will Brokate in Humorous and Addy Anderson in Poetry. “Despite it being the first tournament, I was super happy on how it went down. I performed well and it was exciting to see so many teammates getting first place,” Sara Auger in Storytelling says. 

The first tournament was held very smoothly and it went great. It was a great competition to start the Cannon Falls Speech Season.