On January 19,  Pella Community’s Speech Club will be hosting the district large group competition of 2019 at Pella Community High School. Speech three-time All-Stater, junior Hanna Kendall, is extremely excited to perform in a familiar place this year.

“I think that it will really nice for all the performers! I mean, we won’t have to travel and get up too early to make it to another school,” said Kendall.  “Our friends also have the opportunity to come and watch all of the performances that we’ve been working so hard on.”

Kendall hopes to see the support of the student body at the competition because “it’s always nice to have familiar faces in the audience” when she performs. Not only are the students looking forward to the new experience of hosting, but Ashlee Whittington, speech coach and English teacher, thinks that  hosting the competition will help the Pella and the speech program economically.

“It’s good for Pella because it brings in a lot of people to our school. We’ll have several thousand people in the building that day. It’s good for the community of Pella too because it brings more people into the town,” said Whittington.  “It also works as a really good fundraiser for our Speech program. Hosting contests typically makes enough money to fund our program completely for two years.”

Hosting isn’t the only thing that Pella’s speech club is anticipating this year. With the returning members and the newly established members, Whittington believes that a “bright future” is to be expected.

“We have a really fun group this year. There’s a lot of people who haven’t done Speech before. We have a fun freshmen group; we have a lot of people returning who will be good leaders with a lot of experience for us. We have lots of categories that have a lot of potential this year. I do think that every group is excited about their script and their ideas. It will be really fun to see how we do this year,” said Whittington. “I hope that other students, who aren’t participating in speech, will come along on the ride and attend district large group.”