Not many high school students want to wake up at 4 a.m. on a Saturday, put on business attire and take a bus to a day-long public speaking competition -- but Warren Township High School’s Speech Team are a motivated bunch. “They work on something most people fear more than death,” said Christina Cooper, head speech team coach.
Warren Speech Team is busy in the middle of their competitive season and preparing for Illinois High School Competition regionals Feb. 8. "At regionals we'll have 16 students competing as individuals and 13 in Performance In the Round [a 15-minute play performed in a circle.]"
Cooper said the Warren team is well known across the state. "We've never gone to a tournament and not placed," Cooper said. The speech team has gone to the state competition the last six years, she said.
At one of the team's weekly Monday afternoon meetings, Cooper told the team, "Take a look at everything and pay attention to what your coaches are telling you. Target repetitive areas."
The competition season is intense -- coaches act as teachers, nurses and even seamstresses as the students compete at schools around the northwestern region every Saturday from the end of November through Saturday, Cooper said. “Three people are sick by the end of the week every year,” Cooper said to a group of students headed to a weekend-long competition in Downers Grove.
There are 14 competitive sections, including dramatic interpretation, oratorial declaration and humorous interpretation. Cooper said "The two hardest are extemporaneous, because you have to have a wide breadth of knowledge about politics and history which is difficult for high schoolers, and original comedy, because everyone thinks they're funny but they're not always."
Impromptu is a section dreaded by most of the speech team, but not Nicole Malinowski, a sophomore who competes in original oratory and impromptu. "You have two minutes to formulate a speech with a thesis and three points, and it's a six minute speech," Malinowski said.
Danielle Gualtieri, senior, started on speech team her freshman year doing informative talks about serious topics. "Everyone told me I was funny and that I should try humor instead, so I switched sophomore year," she said, and she's discovered another side of herself.
The speech team offers the opportunity for students to take up mentorship roles. Juniors and seniors take on younger students as novices to show them the ropes and help them with repetitive behaviors. Jamie Kreppin, senior, said she once tied her coat around a novice who flailed her arms too much while speaking.
Jennifer Wadas, junior, said there's a lot of overlap between speech team and Warren's drama club. "Knowing you got these scores on your own is really rewarding. Practice makes perfect," she said.
It's not all public speaking, said Imani Davis, senior. Davis competes in poetry, which is basically slam poetry, she said. "You have the freedom in poetry to do what you want. You can take little pieces of other poems and mix it up."
Trey Caldwell, speech team coach, graduated from Warren in 2009 and was on speech team. "A lot of the work ethic I have today is because of speech team," Caldwell said. "It allows kids to learn communication skills so they can kill a job interview. You have to learn quickly and be able to think on your toes for competition, and you're looking for mass appeal."
Cooper said speech team gives students a voice. "It makes them confident so they can speak for presentations and be assertive when they get jobs," she said.