Speech team cleans up in Libby

Saturday was a long day for the Bigfork High School speech and drama team, but they made the most of the 17 hour day with many competitors finishing the Libby meet with their highest placement of the season.

“It was our most successful tournament and was a great warm up for divisionals in two weeks in Ronan,” said BHS head speech and drama coach Charlie Appleby.

In speech, Kayla Carlson came away from the meet with her first win of the season in Memorized Public Address, and Laura Colvin finished eighth. Caitlann O’Dell had her highest placement of the year as well, taking third in Expository. Both Zoe Gaiser and Krisie Henderson went to finals in Humorous Oral Interpretation for the first time this season and took seventh and eighth place, respectively.

The Bigfork drama team had their highest placing as a team this season, finishing third. Jerry Gaiser and Jacob Sefcak took first place in Humorous Duo and Brandon Western and Tanner Eshom took second. Amy Gembala and Jenna Egdorf finished fourth in Classical Duo. Appleby said that the girls’ performance showed “their grasp of Shakespeare’s language and his propensity to make women fight over men.” Kristi Persinger was another Bigfork competitor with a best finish of the season, placing fifth in Serious Solo. In Humorous Solo Becca Denning placed fourth, last year’s divisional champion Gwen Frat finished fifth and Kianna Wicklund placed eighth.

“Libby often acts as a kind of pre-divisional tournament for the Northwest, and while we have a lot of work to do, and great competition from every other school in the division, I was very pleased with the way we performed in our last season as an ‘A’ school,” Appleby said.

Bigfork travels to Loyola on Saturday for their last regular season meet. They will compete in the divisional tournament in Ronan on Jan. 24.