An addition to Columbia High School’s extracurriculars this year has seen tremendous success and appears to have a bright future, providing students the chance to stretch their speaking and performance skills.

The CHS Speech Team has had an exceptional inaugural year, with a strong performance at its latest and past tournaments offering a solid change as it moves into the postseason.

During a recent tournament at Lincoln High School, Grace Hunsucker won first place for dramatic interpretation, and Columbia’s Performance in the Round cast also won.

CHS Librarian and Speech Team Coach Catherine Downen shared that, over the course of six regular league tournaments this year, the team has had 17 varsity placements and 84 junior varsity placements which she said is “unheard of” for a first-year team.

Downen herself played a vital role in providing these students a foundation for their success.

Having served as the assistant coach for the Waterloo High School Speech Team for 10 years, she came to the CHS library this year and found there was a void she could help fill.

“When I started at Columbia, I was like, ‘There’s no speech team here, and there really should be, because it’s a great opportunity,’” Downen said.  “So I took my background and presented it to the board here, and they said we could start a team.”

As she recalled, the program has been well-received by students – in some part thanks to the strong speech team activity in Waterloo and Belleville – with a fluctuating roster of about 20-30 students participating from tournament to tournament.

Offering an overview of the speech team experience, Downen explained that students can enjoy a wide range of performances, with broad categories being public speaking and acting.

“The best part about speech is it really depends on what you want to get out of it,” Downen said. “It’s pretty much 50-50 between public speaking and acting. Those are the primary targets for speech. If you wanna do public speaking, we have informative speeches, persuasive speeches, but if you like acting, it can be dramatic, funny, it could be self-written, it could be a script.”

With a number of enthusiastic students on the team, CHS junior Awnalee Leonard and Hunsucker, a senior, joined Downen in recounting the speech season so far.

Hunsucker said she’s long had an interest in theatre and has taken to the stage aplenty over the years.

Earlier in her high school career, she’d been keen to join Waterloo’s team thanks to a friend and the fact the WHS team has welcomed their neighbors in the past, though scheduling and transportation never allowed her the opportunity.

She was plenty eager, then, to join the CHS team when Downen got the ball rolling.

Leonard had a slightly different story, gravitating to the speech team a bit more slowly and finding her niche in public speaking.

“I heard it on the announcements, and I didn’t even come to the first meeting,” Leonard said. “Then I came down here, and I saw the people who were signed up, and I really thought about it. I had done public speaking in the past at a few events, spoke at my church. I went home, and I talked to my grandma about it, and she was like, ‘Well, if you get to write speeches, might as well do it.’”

Both students also touched on their performances for the year, with Hunsucker having done dramatic interpretation, dramatic duet, acting and poetry and Leonard focusing on special occasion speaking – a self-written humorous speech about a personally important subject – and spreading her dramatic wings with poetry in the later half of the season.

The two of them have also joined the rest of the team for the large Performance in the Round, which sees the entire group – actors and public speakers alike – come together for a 15-minute performance on a subject of their choosing, with the team selecting the Space Shuttle Challenger as their topic.

Leonard and Hunsucker both discussed their overall experiences and takeaways from the CHS speech team this year.

Hunsucker particularly touched on her experience as a lead in the performance in the round, speaking about what it’s like to contribute her acting experience to such a large group.

“That’s really helped me understand a lot of teamwork and working together, where everyone has their strengths, another person might have that weakness and helping each other learn and build with that,” Hunsucker said. “Responsibility has been a huge thing with this.”

She further discussed how being a part of the team has helped her passion for performance grow. Hunsucker has found particular satisfaction in sharing her experience with those in the group who haven’t been on-stage quite as much as her.

“This is my passion, this is my love, this is why I do speech It is something that just sparks joy and fulfillment in me,” Hunsucker said. “To get to see people who haven’t found that same interest yet or haven’t had the opportunity or just haven’t quite been brave enough to take the leap… being able to help others understand what I’ve been taught my entire life is such a lovely thing, just to see them grow and get to know them as people and castmates alike.”

Leonard likewise spoke about the group performance and emphasized the importance of teamwork she’s learned, though she also noted the personal growth she’s undergone as a speaker.

“In my individual events, I’ve become way more confident, and I can speak way more clearly,” Leonard said. “I had a really bad habit of talking really fast when I first started and stuttering, so I learned how to regulate my speed, I guess. On the team part and PIR, I’ve definitely learned to be a team player… Being around people who have the same interests as me and the same wants really helps me want it more, want to win state, hopefully.”

On teamwork, Leonard additionally noted the amount of growth she’s witnessed among herself and her peers as they’ve progressed through the season.

Speaking to the benefits of being on the speech team, Hunsucker described how it provides an excellent environment for any student to improve their speaking or performance skills.

She mentioned the immediate feedback students get on speech team as they receive their scores following a tournament, with her and her teammates being eager to grow each time.

“Nobody can be hurt from joining speech,” Hunsucker said. “It can be beneficial to anyone for anything. No matter where you go in life, public speaking is always going to be a part of it, and being composed and well-driven, along with the many other things you gain from it, is always going to be worth it.”

Leonard also discussed the broad benefits of speech team participation. She spoke about the varied backgrounds on the team and how the experience can be useful for just about anyone.

“Yes, there’s a lot of acting parts in it, but people who want to do public speaking, politics, being a lawyer, doing any of that or being an actor, you can find any part of speech that relates to you,” Leonard said. “I see kids that do sports and speech, kids that do acting and speech. It’s very broad.”

Downen also offered her thoughts on the importance of the speech team as an extracurricular, having fallen in love with it in school herself to the point of wanting to offer that same experience for students for the past decade.

She described the speech team as a tremendously welcoming environment for any student to find something they’re passionate about.

“I think what really has me coming back every year and then starting the team here, I think the best part about speech is it gives students a place,” Downen said.  “No matter what you need or are looking for, we’ll find a spot for you. You always have a place here. That’s what I took out of speech, having a place in high school, having something you were a part of and you could take pride in.”

Though the team has seen plenty of success in the season already, Downen noted her hopes for continued excellence at IHSA regionals this Saturday, potentially followed by sectionals and state.

Looking even further ahead, she said she looks forward to growing the team for next year – plans are set for a recruiting event for next year’s freshmen – and particularly getting a greater presence among individual performances as she encouraged the group to stick with the performance in the round for their first year.

“The first year set the bar pretty high,” Downen said. “I’m not gonna lie, that was really impressive what they came out and did this year… Next year I’m hoping to see us expand into the individual categories in the post-season a little bit more.”

With an excellent start, the team is sure to leave folks speechless in the future.