The Speech and Debate team had their second competition at Liberty High School on Friday, Oct. 21 and Saturday, Oct. 22. The first day consisted of mainly debate, and the second mainly of speech. Many schools around the area competed, including: Pattonville, Wentzville, and Howell Central.

Junior, Grant Freitas competed in poetry reading as a novice, meaning this is his first year. Freitas read “The Man With the Broken Fingers” by Carl Sandburg. “I thought it went really well” said Freitas, “I was never really sure if I did good or bad because a lot of other people did very good too.” Freitas later came to find out that he placed first. “It was very surprising,” Freitas said, “I didn’t expect it at all. I had butterflies in my stomach, times 100.” Freitas prepared for the competition by practicing reading the poem numerous times with the new assistant coach, Dr. Vaughn.

Dr. Vaughn has been coaching the team for about two months now. Vaughn has a lot of background and knowledge about speech and debate; Vaughn has taught theatre and speech for about 26 years now. “They did awesome,” Vaughn said, “They had a lot of good energy, gave it their all and did some really great work.”

Freshman, Tom Jamison competed in humorous interpretation. Jamison took an entire play and cut it down to 10 minutes. Not only that, he memorized the entire thing. Every night in order to prepare for the competition, Jamison recited the entire play into a wall. Jamison placed fifth against six other varsity contestants. “I was very pleased with the results,” Jamison said, “It was truly a lot of fun.” A lot of other teammates placed as well. “We did very well in speech,” Jamison said, “Debate wasn’t as successful. No one made finals.”