West Chicago’s Speech team had its first competition on Dec. 6 with six competitors.
IHSA Speech is a competition where students can perform in a variety of public speaking, acting, and interpretation events. Each event has its own rules and requirements, along with a time limit, and typically three preliminary rounds.
IHSA Speech has 14 events: seven acting-based interpretation events, five public speaking events, and two other performative events.
Oakland High School senior Henry Evers has been doing Speech for his entire high school career. According to Evers, he has made it to the final round several times, both this season and last season.
“It is always nerve-racking, but as long as you keep a clear mind, you should be able to do anything you put your mind to,” Evers said.
Specifically, Evers performs in the Informative Speaking (INF) and Special Occasion Speaking (SOS) events.
INF is a speech used to teach the audience something new. Some common topics typically include the science of animals or the history of something so simple that people tend not to think of, for example, laughter. SOS is a speech used for a fictional situation. For example, a graduation speech or a wedding toast.
Both of these topics have an 8-minute time requirement with a grace period of 30 seconds, and they must be completely memorised.
“I’ve always loved INF way more than SOS, I don’t usually like putting on a show for a specific audience. I think the best audience is always the people around me, not a specific group,” Evers said.
The overall ranking of schools placed in this tournament holds Joliet West with a combined score of 409. After that, Marin held a score of 366 while Einshower came in a close third place with a score of 361.
WEGO junior Allison Montalvo attended her first-ever Speech competition.
“It went well, I learned a lot about speech competitions. Seeing other people’s performances was very fun,” Montalvo said.
While Speech is not always looked at as a sport, Evers shares how one must stay focused to succeed to your best ability.
“Keep yourself with a level head, keep yourself focused, you can goof around, but know that this is a competition, treat it like you would any other sport, seriously,” Evers said.