Taking State in '08!!!
by Corey Friedli
March 23, 2008
State qualifying members Jimmy Simpson, Steele Valenzuela, and Megan Malloy, along with speech coaches Mrs. Mace and Mrs. Brokaw and supporting teammates, made their way down to Kearney, NE on Tuesday. The competitions began at 7 am on Wednesday morning for class C2. Megan Malloy competed in extemporaneous speaking against from very strong competitors. She did not make the top six and was unable to continue on to finals, but did an outstanding job and placed 9th out of the sixteen competitors. We are extremely proud of her success at state.
Also competing for Northeast schools was the duet of Jimmy and Steele and Jimmy in his serious speech. Individually Jimmy did an outstanding job in preliminaries and made it into the top six and continued to finals. At finals Jimmy placed 2nd, making him runner-up for the state in serious prose. The duet of Jimmy and Steele did an extraordinary job in preliminaries. They received two first place rankings and moved onto finals to compete with five other teams. Throughout the year, the duo had done an outstanding job, placing first at almost every meet in which they competed. During awards, the entire Northeast cheering section was sweating bullets as the runner-up was about to be announced and the two teams left were Austin Dvorak and Teresa Victor of Laurel-Concord and our very own Jimmy Simpson and Steele Valenzuela. Tears of joy and screams of excitement came as Laurel-Concord was named second, making Jimmy and Steele, the Class C2 State champions of Duet Acting for 2008!!!!
Not only did our individuals place very well, but as a team , Northeast placed 5th out of all the schools competing in the Class C2 competition with a total of 38 points. We are all very proud of everyone's hard work work throughout the speech season this year and excited to be seeing Jimmy and Steele in the Hall of Fame very soon.
