CCHS students to participate in state speech contest Saturday

Creston Community High School speech students are headed to state.

On Saturday 13 groups from Creston Community High School (CCHS) will compete at the IHSSA State Large-Group Speech Contest.

This year 85 students from CCHS participated in large group speech.

“We’ve been growing the program quite a bit because there’s a lot of kids that really benefit from being a part of something and being a part of speech team. I love getting kids involved,” said Laura Granger, CCHS speech coach.

Granger is the coach of the speech team along with assistant coach Brenda Dillenburg CCHS English teacher, volunteer coaches and CCHS alumni, David Qualseth and Becca Coleman and “helpers” Cameron Millslagle and Trey Gift, both alumni.

“It’s all kind of just a big team effort,” said Granger.

Granger said speech helps students form lifelong frienwds, make wonderful memories, gain confidence and just be more comfortable being themselves.

Granger said she loves her job as the speech coach because it’s “really cool” to see the students do well in competition and to see how their hard work has “paid off.”

Jacob Rutz, 11th-grade student at CCHS, is a member of the musical theater and readers theater groups in speech.

“[Speech] lets people express themselves in a very interesting way,” said Rutz.

“It’s really tight-knit family-like.” said 12th grader Riley Beard.

Beard will be attending Southwestern Community College next year and will help coach the CCHS speech team while in college.

Kayln Shaw, a ninth grade student at CCHS said she loves participating in speech because of the new people she meets. Shaw is a member of group mime and on the tech team for the one-act group.

The IHSSA State Large-Group Speech Contest will take place Feb. 2 at West Des Moines Valley High School in West Des Moines.