By Sydney Bartels
The 2022-23 Silver Lake speech team began their season early this year with their first meet on December 17 in Cozad. Speech members used this meet to gather feedback from the judges and gain experience presenting. Because their season doesn’t usually begin until January, they plan to use this extra time to contemplate the judges’ feedback and make adjustments to their speeches accordingly. Considering Silver Lake was competing against much larger schools, the students had a great day. They put together many round wins as a group and even brought home two overall placings. Senior Samantha Bonifas received first place overall with her persuasive speech titled, “Not Milk.” A group put together by junior Taylor Hanson, junior Savanna Junek, sophomore Milla Butler, and sophomore Sophie Butler brought home a fifth-place medal for their Oral Interpretation of Drama or OID. Junior Morgan Dinkler shared her thoughts about the day: “I was happy to have the opportunity to be able to present at a meet before our regular season begins. I’m looking forward to reading through all of the judges’ comments and implementing their ideas into my duet speech to improve our performance.”