Nina Sinclair, 7th grade, News Editor
Academic teams better watch out. Noe Middle School started its first ever official speech team.
It’s almost exactly like it sounds: students performing speeches, but there is way more to know about Noe’s new team.
Speech team is an extracurricular activity, run by Emily Pinkerton, a math teacher on Voyagers.
Students indulge in many different events and performances at practices and tournaments.
Events include Prose, where students have a prepared monologue in a book that they perform, Original Oratory, where members write and memorize their own speech, and Extemporaneous Speaking, where performers are given a topic and have 30 minutes to research and prepare a speech on if they agree with it or not.
Extemporaneous Speaking tests their performance skills and ability to prepare something before a deadline and be confident enough to present it to a group of people you don’t know.
Some people may wonder what experience Emily Pinkerton has that would make her the best option for a coach.
“When I was in middle school and high school, I was on a speech team and I have the best memories from doing it. Not only do I have positive memories from it, but I think the skills that I learned are things that I still use today,” explained Pinkerton.
Pinkerton was a fellow speech team member herself in her youth and has claimed many victories that she will use to lead her students to success.
Speech team wasn’t easy to form though, Pink had to overcome several obstacles to establish it.
“One of the biggest challenges that we faced because this was a new team is that we didn’t have any financial support at the beginning because we were brand new. So we actually had to do a fundraiser to get the funds to actually register the team on the state level,” stated Pinkerton.
Students helped out with the fundraising and also spreading information to the school about the new team.
“We got students to participate by creating flyers and putting them up around the school, making announcements about it, and also talking to classes about it. So, after that we were able to schedule an interest meeting where we actually had students from Manual high school come and do a workshop,” explained Pinekrton.
By this time, many students were interested in joining the new team and then had to send in their audition performing a piece.
We now have 25 kids on the team and have had several finalists in our tournaments.
Pinkerton doesn’t just care about winninut winning, she just hopes that “Students really have fun and that individual students achieve their personal goals.”
The most successful person on the speech team right now happens to be Vega Saguar, 7 Innovators.
She has won fourth in her first tournament for Exempt and sixth in her last tournament for Extemp.
“I wanted to get better at public speaking and it would look really good for high school applications for the future,” explained Saguar.
Little did she know that she would achieve many great things in her time on the team.
Saguar also loves being a part of the team.
“It’s really fun. It’s a collective experience, I get to meet new people and learn a lot about what’s going on in our world,” stated Saguar.
Speech team is also not just about winning for her, she loves to just be around people that understand and get her, to be a part of a community.
Now that she has become very successful in Extemp, she has decided to branch out and join some new events.
“I’m currently competing in Exempt and Prose. I like Exempt because I get to learn a lot about real world events and prose because I get to practice a historical piece and show it to the world,” explained Saguar.
She’s excited to compete in these events, but she’s okay even if she doesn’t win because she just wants to reach her own personal goals.
“In Extemp I would love to place in the top three, and with prose to really develop my acting skills,” stated Saguar.
But whatever the case, we all know the speech team will be victorious in their own way.