Speech team members Efrain Aguilar earned a perfect score and Jack Gillespie scored almost perfect in speech team’s first state-level competition of the 2018 season.

“I was incredibly excited realizing what I had accomplished. Especially in the heavily competitive regional we were in,” Aguilar said.

Speech team hosted the regional tournament on Feb. 3.

“We’ve hosted the regional before, I think we’ve hosted it two or three times here at the school,” speech coach Paul Lichy said.

Speech team went against Wheaton North, Wheaton South, Glenbard West, Glenbard North, St. Charles East, Naperville North, Geneva, and Illinois Math and Science Academy.

“Those are pretty intimidating teams against but at the regional level they kind of balance because you’re only allowed to enter a competitor per 14 events,” Lichy said.

Preparing for the tournament consisted of hard work.

“So this weekend was the combination of the whole lot of time that we put into the school and the team tournament,” Lichy said.

Since this was their first competition, many members were nervous.

“Going into a regional is always nerve-wracking. We have an incredibly strong region,” Lichy said. “We’re looking at schools like Glenbard they have anywhere between 75 to 120 kids on their team.”

Speech team scored fourth place overall.

“We actually had some pretty outstanding results,” Lichy said. “For our school, we came in fourth in our region, so that’s a pretty good place based on a team of our size.”

Their next competition will be on Saturday.