Pella High School is sending 12 out of 14 speech teams to State speech. To qualify for State, teams need to score a I rating in districts. This year, districts were split up between two days, January 22 and January 23. The Pella High School Speech team performed their acts at Pella High School and was the only school performing there because of Covid-19 restrictions. 

The Addams Family is one of the varsity musical theatre groups that scored a I rating and qualifies for state speech. Actors in the group include Abbi Adrian, Grant Anderson, Braelyn Ensor, Connor Gauley, Maggie Leach, Travis Mitchell, and Hannah Tschetter. All of the members are a part of Pella’s spring musical The Addams Family and perform the roles they play in the musical. 

“Finding out I would be going to State was really exciting, especially because of the times we’re in now,” said junior Maggie Leach. “With the pandemic going on right now, a lot of schools in Iowa aren’t able to have speech this year so it was a really good feeling knowing that we could even compete and that my teams would be advancing.” 

While the team is excited to be going to state they know they have to continue preparing because this is not the end of their hard work. After performing, judges give teams advice on what to do to help prepare for the state competition and to help make their performance better. 

The team was already aware of what needed improvement before the judges told them. Senior Hannah Tschetter said, “We just need to clean up some of our things that we didn’t have time to fix before. We also just need to become more confident in our piece which will come with the extra practice.” 

Although the team was thankful they were able to perform and watch their teammates, they were disappointed they could not see the performances of teams from different schools. 

However, sophomore Grant Anderson has hope. “All-City Speech Night would be a chance to see some performances from another school, so I’m hoping that will get rescheduled soon.”

Since Anderson’s comment, the All-City Speech Night has been rescheduled to February 5th and 6th at Pella Christian.