A month into the 2021 speech season, Luverne High School senior Destiny Matthiesen is getting used to the new tournament format that the coronavirus pandemic has forced on the normally in-person activity.
Notably, there are fewer people.
“It is different seeing only eight to 10 people when it was 30 people,” she said.
This is Matthiesen’s sixth year competing in the extemporaneous reading category.
She is a team captain with fellow seniors Xavier Carbonneau, also a six-year member, and Josie Golla, a four-year member.
Matthiesen competes in one of the draw categories in which students randomly select before each round the story, topic or selection they will perform.
Instead of competing in a classroom with eight other students from different schools, Matthiesen is alone in a Luverne classroom and connects via Zoom with students in her same category delivering speeches at their own schools.
For this year’s speech season there are no bus trips and no encouragement from teammates.
Competitors from the other nine categories video recorded their speeches prior to the tournament and don’t meet in-person on Saturdays.
Veteran speech coaches Gavin Folkestad and Caroline Thorson continue to develop good public speaking skills in the 20-25 seventh- through 12th-grade students on this year’s team.
“Even with the challenges of doing speech in a brand new format, we still have high expectations for our students and team,” Folkestad said. “We have a good mix of quality veteran members and new members who have a lot of potential.”
Luverne continues to excel as a team.
In its first virtual hybrid meet Feb. 13, Luverne placed second as a team followed by first-place finishes at the Adrian invitational on Feb. 20 and Feb. 27 at Redwood.
Golla recorded her speeches for each of the first three meets. She competes in the prose category and in duo interpretation with teammate Mia Wenzel.
She said she misses the interaction with other speech students and the energy created by a group.
“It is a nod to how much of a family we are,” said Golla.
“It's not like you compete as an individual but we compete as a team – not so much with COVID because we haven’t been able to get on a bus and go somewhere and have fun on the bus.”
She said camaraderie occurs on a smaller scale.
“Right now it is about personal growth in your category and being the best speaker that you can be,” she said.
As the speech season progresses through March and into post-season tournaments in April, Folkestad said organizers might turn toward virtual live performances.
Instead of videotaping speeches, all students will meet at their home high schools and compete virtually in three competitive rounds, the more traditional speech tournament format.
As Luverne students come together for tournaments, Carbonneau sees an opportunity for the team captains to nurture the team’s younger students.
“This isn’t the best year for speech in general, and I hope they do well enough that they want to come back,” he said.
Under the new tournament format, Folkestad said he’s hopeful this year’s speech season will lead to a state meet.
The pandemic ended the prior season with no subsection, section or state tournaments.
Luverne’s remaining speech schedule (and the host sites) includes:
•Saturday, Montevideo.
•March 8-12, Southwest Minnesota State University.
•March 18, Big South.
•March 20, Russell-Tyler-Ruthton.
•March 27, Minneota.
•April 6, subsection 10, Adrian.
•April 17, sections, SMSU.
•April 24, state tournament, Eastview High School, Apple Valley.