A Historic State Speech Victory

This past weekend, the Madison Speech and Debate team won the state speech tournament, despite taking zero first place trophies in any given events.

“It’s the first time we’ve ever won state speech with Bruce Benson as our coach,” Senior, and team captain, Rosie McKamey said.

While the team did well, there was a lot of paranoia preceding the tournament.

“I hope the other people here are as freaked out as I am,” Sophomore Ian Hunsaker said at the opening of the tournament.

McKamey credits a lot of the team’s success to their passion for their speech topics.

“We wrote speeches about things that we are passionate about and our speeches were kind of cutting-edge,” McKamey said.

While team members say the unity within the team was initially weak this year, they also believe it turned around to be one of the factors of their success.

“There was a lot of conjunction within the team this year. In the end we brought the team back together and were really successful,” Junior Oliver Hancock said.

Although nobody placed first in their individual events, Madison still secured the win through their numerous second, third, and finalist trophies.

“Everybody brought their A-game, but ours was a little higher,” Hancock said.