Joliet West speech team marks season of firsts with sectional championship, state finalists

Joliet — The Joliet West High School speech team concluded the strongest season in team history last weekend with two of its senior students placing at the state tournament in Peoria.

The team sent seven students to compete in nine of the 14 individual events at the state competition, which took place Feb. 22 and 23.

The top three students in each event advance from sectionals to the state tournament, resulting in 18 students in each event competing at state. Ties for third place at the sectional level can result in larger competitions.

The students with the top six scores (which can include ties) advance to the final round of competition at state and are recognized with awards. Team trophies are awarded based on the points scored by students in finals.

Joliet West went into the state series with the best regular-season record the team has ever had, winning or taking second place at every invitational tournament in which the Tigers competed.

“It was a very special season,” head coach and drama teacher Kristin Blake said. “We won almost every tournament we went to.”

Overall the team won seven invitationals, including its conference tournament, took second place at one invitational, and the novice team – made up of the team’s first-year members – placed third at the season’s first tournament in October.

The regional team – comprising one student competing in each event – placed first at Bradley-Bourbonnais High School on Feb. 8 and advanced in all the events to sectionals, including Performance in the Round, a group event consisting of a 15-minute theatrical performance. This performance gave the team an advantage going into the sectionals, from which it also emerged as champions.

“This was the first time we’ve ever won sectionals,” Blake said. “It was a goal of mine at our speech camp over the summer, so reaching that goal was incredibly special for me.”

“This was the first time we’ve ever won sectionals. It was a goal of mine at our speech camp over the summer, so reaching that goal was incredibly special for me.”

—  Kristin Blake, Joliet West head coach and drama teacher

Making it to state

The students who advanced to state were Kara Duensing in informative speaking (second place); Belle Magoski in both dramatic interpretation (second place) and poetry reading (first place); Bethany Yanchick in impromptu speaking (second place) and extemporaneous speaking (third place); Molly Murdock-Schey in original oratory (second place); Sariana Mateo in prose reading (first place); Calloway Walsh in special occasion speaking (second place); and Katie Mongelli, who qualified for dramatic duet acting along with Duensing (second place).

“It felt incredibly special this season,” said Duensing, a senior and assistant team captain who has been on the speech team for four years. “The goal was always to get to state, but getting to actually do it felt like everything paid off. It was so much fun, and the coaches did so much to make the state series special for us as a team.”

At the state tournament, two students advanced to the final round: Yanchick in impromptu speaking and Magosky in poetry reading.

“The goal was always to get to state, but getting to actually do it felt like everything paid off.”

—  Kara Duensing, Joliet West speech team member

Magosky took eighth place overall in poetry, while Yanchick had the season’s highest finish for Joliet West with a fifth-place finish from a final round of seven in impromptu. This is an event in which students have only two minutes to prepare a six-minute speech based on a prompt revealed to them in the competition room.

“Placing at state my senior year from impromptu, an event that I’ve done for all four years, felt like a culmination of all the hard work that I have put in since I was a freshman,” Yanchick said.

This was Yanchick’s second year competing at state in impromptu.

“It was even more special to go double entered in extemp and with the largest state team we’ve ever sent,” she said. “I am so happy that I got this weekend to say goodbye to the activity that has shaped my life. This season felt like a love letter to all my years on speech, and to the coaches and alumni that mentored me through it.”

The prompt for Yanchick’s final speech was a quote from Dolly Parton: “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” Yanchick used this prompt to speak about “the importance of creating your own path in life,” illustrated by examples from history and literature.

Yanchick had a unique challenge entering the state tournament, as both of her events are “limited prep” events, meaning both are written in a short amount of time at the tournament before each round, making preparation for the competition difficult.

She also entered with a unique legacy, as her mother qualified for state in impromptu years ago while she was a student.

“This was my first year having both of my events be limited prep, which was a little stressful,” Yanchick said. “I have done impromptu my entire speech career, so preparing for state was more a matter of getting in the right headspace and honing my craft, but this was my first year in extemp. I never thought I would go to state, but Mrs. Blake believed in my abilities, and I had a whirlwind year trying to be the best I could in one season.”

Creating a legacy

Yanchick is a team captain and one of 15 seniors graduating from the team in the spring, the largest graduating class the team has ever had.

The large departure is something Blake said made this season even more special.

“Next year will be interesting,” Blake said, although she is hopeful, as the class of freshman this year was larger than normal.

“I am extremely proud of all of them,” Blake said. “They did great. State is a very interesting competition, and a lot of our kids were one or two points out of finals.”

Beyond the winning and trophies, the graduating seniors were all thrilled to be part of an event that allowed them to build lasting friendships with their teammates.

“I feel so incredibly lucky to be part of such a great program,” Duensing said. “It’s not just about winning. It’s about having fun and being a team.”

“We always joke that speech is about the friends we made along the way, but it’s true,” team captain Murdock-Schey said. “It’s very special how we all care about each other. We all want each other to succeed. At sectionals, we were the loudest team there, jumping and screaming and hugging whenever our kids got announced. It’s great getting to do something like this as not just a team but a family.”

“You get to a point as a coach where your eye is always on the next prize,” Blake said.

She recalled that when she started coaching 10 years ago, the team had four members.

“My first goal was to win a tournament. Then, it was to win conference. Then regionals. We kept pushing that goal, and this year the goal was to win sectionals, so I guess our next goal is really crazy. We’ll see if we can do it someday,” Blake said.

Yanchick for her part is very encouraging of new students becoming part of that aspirational future state championship team, saying that speech “has been the best part of my life thus far.”

“My teammates hopefully know that Joliet West is the very, very best,” Yanchick said. “We love our coaches. Mrs. Blake and Tony [Nardi] are the best coaches in the world. Mrs. Blake pours her heart and soul into every little detail and is rooting for us more than we are for ourselves.”

Several of the state-qualifying students, including Yanchick, Duensing and Murdock-Schey, have one more performance competition for Joliet West in March, when they will compete in group interpretation with their abridged performance of Disney’s “Frozen.”