Three members of the Sigourney Speech Team earned a trip to state following a showing of their short film at the district contest last weekend. 

Juniors Amiya Smallwood, Ava Fineran, and Carly Goodwin received a Division 1 rating for their film, entitled “Little Intruder”. Covering the topic of bullying, the three wrote, produced, and acted in the film, which they presented to the audience at the competition. Fineran, describing the experience, told KCII “It was exciting definitely going in there. We got a lot of good positive feedback.”

While Fineran had previously been involved in speech, it was Smallwood and Goodwin’s first time. They were pleasantly surprised upon getting their results, as Smallwood explains, “We were confident in our film, but we didn’t expect to advance.”

With one week to go before the state competition, the work is not done for the trio. Goodwin shared the group’s plans to improve the film based on judges’ feedback. “A couple of things that [the judge] told us to work on were the audio, and as a group we thought we could make it a little longer,” she said. 

The IHSSA State Large Group Speech contest will be held on Saturday, February 4 at Cedar Rapids Washington High School.