State Speech

March 19, 2009

The Wisner-Pilger speech team returned from the C1-3 district speech contest at Wayne State College with seven Gator state qualifiers in six events.

Two Gator speakers claimed district titles, led by senior Nicole Harder, who claimed championship honors in informative speaking; and sophomore Miranda Hammerback, who won first place gold in serious prose.

Runner-up honors went to junior Kasey Pestel in persuasive and sophomore Lizz Cornett in poetry, while third place medals were earned by Luke Evans in extemporaneous speaking and the drama team of Harder, Cornett, Evans, Maryia Schneider and Nathan Stastny also finished third overall.

The number of events and qualifiers is the highest for the Gators since 2002, according to Gregg Moeller, W-P speech coach along with student teacher Ross Lafleur. "As a team, this easily was our best showing of the season," Moeller said. "We saved our best performances for last. I am especially pleased with how well the younger members of the team performed. We were by far the youngest and most inexperienced team in the district, and yet we were leading up until the last results came in. I am very impressed with and proud of how they handled that pressure."

Gator speakers qualifying for finals but not advancing to state included Bubba Page, fourth in extemporaneous; Taylor Horst, fifth in informative; Tawny Nekuda, fifth in persuasive; Thays Lantz, fifth in entertainment; Nathan Stastny sixth in poetry; and the duet team of Sarah Schweers and Cameron Smyth, which placed sixth. Speakers who earned superiors but did not advance to finals included Cameron Smyth and Taylor Horst in humorous prose.

In the team race, the Gators finshed a close third behind Lutheran Northeast and Oakland-Craig. Other schools participating were West Point-Beemer, Wakefield, Logan View, Homer, Columbus Scotus, and Tekamah-Herman. Wisner-Pilger's six speakers now advance to the C-1 state championship, which will be held Thursday, March 19th at the University of Nebraska-Kearney campus.

"The kids have worked all year for this honor, and they deserve it," Moeller said. "They will represent Wisner-Pilger well."

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