Photo courtesy of Lone Tree Community School social media

The Lone Tree Speech Team sent seven groups to Liberty High School last week to compete in the District Large Group Speech Contest. By day’s end, four of those groups received a division 1 rating to advance to State.

The first group to qualify was Choral Reading, which includes Katie McCarty, Alex Dautremont, Cate Sexton, Cade Willoz, Lukas Fuhrmeister, Isabelle Eagle, Jazmine Nino, Rylie Viers, Hayden Yoder, and Maddi Floyd. Lone Tree’s Readers Theatre group received a division 1 rating as well, and includes Dautremont, Sexton, Viers, Floyd, plus Avery Lisk. McCarty also qualified for State in Solo Mime, as did Sami Branson.

Viers, who qualified for State for the first time, shared the feeling with KCII. “I was a little shocked with my two pieces, because this is my first year and I’ve been to many speech contests before. I’ve seen [groups] not getting a division one rating and getting one. When I first got it, I was like ‘Wow. I’m actually going on and I get to do this again.”

Lone Tree had two Group Improv teams that received a division II rating. These were comprised of Fuhrmeister, Willoz, Weston Waldschmidt, William Rockafellow, Dominic Graap, and Vaughn Judge. The Short Film Group of Waldschmidt, Judge, Branson, Rockafellow, Lisk, Caydence Cotton, and Seth Kunkle earned a division II rating as well.

The qualifying teams will compete next in the IHSSA State Large Group Speech Contest at Pleasant Valley High School on Saturday, February 3.