The Warren Central speech team has started its newest season and with it, they have started to rebuild their team chemistry and skill again. They have been progressing on how well they present speeches, the process they go through while creating them, and how they prepare to present their argument.
Marquis Brown, a freshman member of the team, believes that getting to know his peers is the best part of being on the speech team, and being able to bond with them also makes them better as a team.
“It’s really the people,” he said. ”Anything I get into it’s the people. It’s really important that you enjoy hanging out with your team and enjoying being around them.”
Making sure they have a clear mind while preparing is arguably one of the most important things they do. Their arguments have to be well prepared to give their speech or argument to the best of their abilities, according to staff sponsor Christian Littell.
“Being able to enter a meet with a clear mind will always give you the advantage and will make everything that you have been practicing up until then so much easier to remember and execute,” Littell said. “It not only enhances your performance, but it also makes it easier to not get distracted or discouraged by your mistakes or the actions of others.”
Formulating the speeches in a way that is well thought out is a hard process for some. Speech students spend time making the argument fluid and well thought out so other people can process it.
“Thinking on your feet and thinking of the best way to respond, because if you do not know how to improvise then you don't know how to go with how the argument’s going and you're not going to be able to go back,” senior Lily Trueblood said.
Creating a speech is a process that the people on the team go through and takes a sizable amount of time to create and go over. They put most of their time and effort into making their speech and practicing for their meets.
When freshman Jayla Westbrook creates a speech, she starts with a thesis, adds an attention grabber that could hook her listener’s interest and thinks of three or more main points of support that she could cover in the allotted time.
“Once all of that is figured out, I have to take my time searching through the internet to back up my points and thesis before I summarize everything I talked about during the speech,” Westbrook said.
The team started its season on Saturday, Nov. 18, and their meets will continue every few weeks through March.