The all-state Eagles

AFTON - East Union speech coach Clarissa McCullough has led her students for over a decade. Beginning as an assistant coach in 2016, she took over the head coach position in 2019, the same year East Union received their first individual all-state nomination when Molly McNeil received a nomination for radio broadcasting.

Seven years later, a decade after she started coaching East Union speech and drama, East Union received their first large group speech all-state nomination.

The team of juniors Reese Guiter, Khloe Parker, Lexi Hansen, Dallas Harper, Brock Driskell, Aiden Denton and sophomore Carter Harper competed in television newscast, creating a “Stranger Things”-themed broadcast. Judges liked it, with the team rising all the way to a non-performing all-state nomination.

“It wasn’t real,” Parker said, describing the moment they heard about the all-state nomination. “It was definitely an honor because we know how much time everyone has put into it, like us, the people before us, our coach, the coaches before us."

“I think it’s just how close this group is,” Guiter said. “We’re all friends. And so making something just came so easy to all of us.”

The group has mostly stuck together ever since first performing together in middle school through McCullough’s fall plays. McCullough had expanded the traditionally high school productions to allow middle schoolers to audition, which served an extra purpose besides giving more opportunities to younger students.

“A lot of my kids that do the fall production are also in speech," McCullough said. “They may have a part in the fall play, or they want to do behind the scenes editing or script writing or set building or costume building or making. So it really is a big family.”

Each student in the newscast group found their own talents.

“It was awesome, except for the tackling part,” Carter said. His character gets tackled in one scene, which had to be recorded multiple times. “But for the most part, it was awesome.”

As students enter speech and drama earlier, the more likely they will stick with speech over the rest of their East Union schooling. It certainly worked for the television newscast group.

McCullough said she tried a different approach with the team this year, letting the team’s creativity guide them. While the team were the captains of their own ship, McCullough would keep them on track.

For the television newscast category, students write, record and edit their own newscasts. They pull their own news stories, weather updates and advertisements for the newscast. The East Union newscast group bounced ideas off each other, focusing and refining the fictional broadcast together.

Even if performing live isn’t comfortable for a student, speech has ways to include all kinds of students. From camerawork, editing and idea brainstorming, the recorded formats help bridge the gaps between students.

“Speech is for everyone, even if you don’t want to get in front of people and act, there’s a place for you,” Parker said.

“The best part about it is that this is filmed, so then you don’t feel the pressure of everybody watching you when it is a live performance, because it’s already done with,” Hansen said. “So you can’t feel scared or judged because you’re doing it in a comfortable environment.”

As McCullough let the group run wild with their creativity, she noted how hard it was to turn down ideas.

“I think the hardest part for me is like they had such great ideas, but the limitation was the budget,” McCullough said. “It’s the same with any school-related vendor project. While we had great ideas... [costumes] were expensive. What could we do to have that, but still make it cost effective? I would say for me anyways, the budget was the limitation.”

Even when butting heads during the creative process, the group still found ways to collaborate. Carter noted he had to keep swapping costumes and getting tackled when scenes were being rewritten or reshot. Long nights and early mornings were part of the process.

“It’s a lot to try and keep your brain going so much,” Parker said. “And there’s a lot of rejection in writing this.”

The newscast group were grateful for the opportunities speech provided them, and were thankful for McCullough and each other.

“I’ll say that over and over again,” Parker said. “We’re such a good group with such a good coach. Speech has helped me so much in so many ways. I would encourage it to anyone.”

“I used to be a very shy kid and would not want to step on anyone’s toes because I always wanted to make everybody happy,” Hansen said. “Speech definitely made me realize that can’t always happen. You have to have arguments if you’re going to grow and that’s probably a lesson that I’ll never forget because of this group.”

“My most rewarding part is just kind of the relationships you build after it," Carter said. “All these guys, I had to spend weeks cooped up in video editing, and I loved it. For the most part, it was awesome. I loved all of these guys so much. Just those few weeks, they were like my second family.”

McCullough had one request for students interested in speech or drama: get involved early.

“I always tell kids, my kind of mantra or motto is try it once,” McCullough said. “You never know what you may like, but don’t become a senior and wish that you would have tried it.”