(L-R) Keegan Colby, Hannah Rees, Molly Klinzman, and Jenna Messer.

A year after COVID-19 closed Iowa schools and cancelled the state individual speech contest, seven Washington High School students will be competing at the state contest at Winfield-Mt. Union High School tomorrow.

Quinn Wubbena, Hannah Rees, Mathew Osborn, Jenna Messer, Molly Klinzman, Keegan Colby, and Brynn Beenblossom all advanced from the district contest that was also held at Winfield-Mt. Union on February 27th to perform for the chance to receive All-State nominations, though there will be no festival for the second year in a row.

Spectators are allowed to watch the contest in person, and they must wear face masks, as well as the students performing. Messer says they chose the option of wearing face shields as it allows them to better emote, and she says this is a step up from the large group contests that were held virtually this year, “We didn’t have a state competition last year because of COVID and so this year when we went to our districts, usually we can watch everybody on our teams and see everybody’s pieces but we could not this year with COVID, because they wanted to get us in and out in as short amount of time as possible. So they stocked everybody up in different rooms at the same time. So we did miss getting to see everybody’s pieces, but it was still nice to be able to travel to a different school.”

You can hear more about this year’s speech events from Messer, Klinzman, Colby, and Rees during Friday’s Halcyon House Washington Page on air and at kciiradio.com.