Speech, drama teams take third

For the second year in a row, the Bigfork High School speech, debate and drama team grabbed third place at divisionals in both speech and drama.

However, this year they had to compete against more schools in order to come away with the honors.

Now that BHS is no longer a Class A school, the speech and drama team participates in the Class B-C Divisional Tournament, which has 16 teams in it besides Bigfork rather than the five other schools that were in their old division.

"Honestly, B divisionals was way tougher than A divisionals," said Charlie Appleby, Bigfork High School speech, debate and drama coach. "The numbers in each event we participated in were much higher and it was not easy to make it to finals."

Cut Bank took first in speech and Malta was second. In drama, it was Shelby that won the top honors and Malta again in second.

Despite the teams' third place finish, the Bigfork students still had to place in the top six in their category in order to advance to the state meet at Loyola-Sacred Heart High School in Missoula this weekend.

Those that finished in seventh or eighth place are invited to attend the meet as alternates.

Bigfork's seven state qualifiers include senior Kayla Carlson, who won the Memorized Public Address event for the second straight year at divisionals. She is also last year's Class A state champion for the same event.

Sophomore Amber McDaniel earned herself a divisional championship in Serious Solo, as did classmate Zoe Gaiser for her Humorous Oral Interpretation performance.

Second place honors were given to Bigfork juniors James Vale and Jacob Sefcak in Humorous Duo.

Junior Gwendolyn Fratt and senior Alex Neu took sixth place in Humorous Solo and in Impromptu, respectively.

Alternates from Bigfork include, Angie Gross, who placed seventh in Serious Solo, Kate Lamm, who finished seventh in Memorized Public Address, and Humorous Duo Ernie Cottle and Kenny Patrick, who finished eighth.

Shelby Biedermann, Camas Garnett and Katelynn LaFever finished just out of finals at the meet, but all three were participating in events with more than 20 contestants.

Bigfork's state-bound speech and drama participants are a mix of the veterans and rookies on the team this year.

"I think that the younger students and the new team-members have adopted the work ethic of the veterans," Appleby said. "Kayla couldn't be more of a veteran and symbol of what it takes to win, and that goes the same with Jacob. Zoe has been around for three years. She was my assistant at all of the meets her eighth-grade year. She is also the sister of Jerry Gaiser, a former drama state champion. Also, I was pretty lucky to have some great talent join the team this year. Both James and Amber are great additions."

Those competing at state will be facing a variety of quality performers.

"Some of the biggest competition at state is Loyola, Malta, Shelby, Conrad, Cut Bank and Simms," Appleby said. "There's also the scary thought that we have never seen more that two-thirds of our competition from around the state. I honestly don't know what to expect."

Appleby said that many of the schools in both the Class A and Class B-C meets choose to compete in either just speech or just drama in order to have one elite team rather than spreading out their resources between a speech team and a drama team.

"I have tried to run a balanced program since I started coaching five years ago," Appleby said. "Sometimes this looks good, like when we take home two trophies. And sometimes I get a little sad, because I know that if I focused all of our energy on one or the other, we could probably win state, or at least place higher. If wishes came true, I would have enough kids to be able to really compete in both categories."

This trend includes Loyola, which is a team that has dominated speech for the last two decades and has no drama team.

"Of course, I make it sound like I'm not happy about third place," Appleby said. "But that's not the case at all. We went out to Malta and fought against all kinds of competition and really did a great job. I am very proud of our little team."