The All-State Large Group Speech Festival is tomorrow. Three groups from Keota High School advanced to the festival after their performances at the state contest earlier this month. According to speech coach Gina Bennett, two of those groups are performing tomorrow; one in the ensemble acting category, and the other in Readers Theatre.

She says they had a successful year, with each of their eight entries in the district competition advancing to state, where they all received division 1 ratings, a first for the Keota speech team.

Bennett has coached the team for the last 12 years. Prior to that, she served as assistant coach to State Hall of Fame Speech Coach Bill Hultman, her coach when she was a member of the team while attending Keota. The current assistant coach is Michael McNurlen.

Start Times

Zach Mousel, Isaiah Hahn, Tyler Verstraete and Nate Sieren’s performance of “Orvis Orvison” in the Readers Theater category begins at 9:35 a.m.

Sloan Ott, Grant Hill and Avery Conrad’s performance of “Remote” in the Ensemble Acting category begins at 1:53 p.m.

Students from Lone Tree, Fairfield and Clear Creek Amana are also performing at tomorrow’s festival. You can find those start times by visiting the Iowa High School Speech Association’s website.