Wausa speech team is aiming for State title

WAUSA — The Wausa High School speech team is heading to Kearney to once again compete for a state title.

Kearney High School will be the scene Friday and coach Kyle Stevens is set to go into battle with a group of students that have brought their best every day.

“We were able to get 31 kids to commit to the team this year, and they competed in all nine speech events,” Stevens said. “We had some nice team success.’’

Nice indeed.

The Wausa squad took home Lewis and Clark Conference and District titles.

‘’The key to our team is each individual’s work ethic. Each student on this team works so hard and really does what he or she needs to do to be successful,’’ Stevens said. ‘’They like performing and they like being with each other and that makes a big difference in practice and in speech meets.”

The Vikings competed with 18 entries involving 18 kids at the conference and district events, and 17 of those earned medals at the latter event and have qualified for a trip to state, having finished in the top three.

The list of qualifiers is in itself, impressive:

Champion: Tyler Baue, Leah Bloomquist, Abrielle Nelson, Trey McQuay, and Cole Story in OID; Baue (serious prose), Claire Kumm (persuasive), Joe Johnson (extemporaneous) and Bloomquist (informative).

Second place: Emily Woockman (persuasive) and Brandon Kristensen (extemporaneous).

Third place: Ali Lundberg (informative), Trey McQuay (entertainment), Cory Schumacher (humorous) and Baue and Story (duet).

“This puts us in a nice position to be competitive as a team,” Stevens said of the Vikings who qualified a student in eight of the nine events.

“We have some really talented, hard-working, and diligent kids on the team,” Stevens said. “I think that is the key to our success. They like what they do, and when they commit to doing something, they put the work in to be successful.

“We had a young team this year. We do lose two valuable seniors in Cory Schumacher and Brooke Kumm. They have been out for four years and they brought a lot of great talent and energy to the team.”

Stevens credits the younger team members for stepping up and the juniors especially being willing to enter leadership roles.

“We have a positive team who get along well and don’ t mind practicing,” Stevens said. “They have high expectations for themselves and the team, and each of them put themselves in positions to be successful consistently. We have a good group going down to state this year. We’ve put ourselves in a position to have success. There are a lot of really talented performers at state. The kids have to go down there and give it their best and we will see what happens.”

Stevens is in his ninth year as the team’s coach and has been aided by his wife Samantha the past six years.

“She is really the glue that holds the team together,” he said. “She does great work with the kids. We are fortunate to get to teach, coach, and live in this great community. The kids’ commitment is what makes the program a consistent success. We have great support and help of the other fine arts programs and coaches.

“Our administration, faculty, and staff at school are great advocates for the program and the kids, and the community cares about the speech team and fine arts.”

For speech team members like Schumacher, this is the time to shine.

“I feel like I have a good chance to do well,” he said. “This is my second time qualifying for state, and I feel like I know what it’s about now. I would like to hopefully make it to finals. Last year, we didn’t get to have state, and I am really lucky to be able to do this one more time.

“It takes a lot of work to do well at speech. You can’t really take a break from it. You have to make sure that you are putting in the practice with coaches and that you are setting aside time to work. We are successful because we are able to devote ourselves to speech. We are willing to put in the effort and work with the coaches.”

Stay in the know!

To get news alerts on your cell phone, get the Cedar County News app in the ITunes store or  in the Google Play Store.