Several Individual Placings at Gator Gabfest
The Leigh Speech team was on the road early on Saturday, February 22 to head to Wisner to compete in the annual “Gator Gab-fest” speech meet.
This is an extremely large meet with 23 schools competing, including Leigh, Humphrey, Omaha Brownell-Talbot, West Point-Beemer, DC Aquinas Catholic, Lincoln Lutheran, Oakland-Craig, Wisner-Pilger, Homer, Elkhorn Mt. Michael, Chambers, GACC, Ponca, North Bend, Laurel-Concord-Coleridge, Scribner-Snyder, Cedar Bluffs, Lyons-Decatur, Tri County Northeast, South Sioux City, Logan View, Bancroft-Rosalie, and UMÓⁿHOⁿ Nation.
Head Coach, Mr. Ethan Hathaway, said, "It was a great day for the Leigh Speech Team! This was a big meet with over 20 schools competing. All our medalists should be proud of themselves for doing so well against so much competition. Congratulations to all of them!"
Because the meet was so large, there were three levels of finals with 6 in each for a total of 18 qualifying for finals in each category. All the events were varsity as there was no novice categories at this meet. Leigh had a very successful meet with 7 placings in finals. Brianne Kuhr placed 2nd in Extemp Finals B, Brayden Loseke placed 5th place in both Informative Finals A and Persuasive Finals B, in Serious Finals C Sydney Messerlie placed 1st, Luke Eisenmann finished 2nd in Extemp Finals C, Kaylee Brabec earned 6th in Persuasive Finals B, and also 6th in Poetry Finals C.
Senior, Brianne Kuhr, said, “The Wisner-Pilger Speech Meet was a large meet, and it gave us the chance to compete against new competition. We had several people make finals, and I was really happy to see our team’s success. The underclassmen are doing very well for our team, and everyone is improving.”
As a team Leigh Varsity finished 16th out of 23 schools.
“I’m sad that our season is slowly coming to an end, but I’m so proud of how far our team has come and I can’t wait for districts!” said Sydney Messerlie.