Three Seward High Students Qualify and Participated in State Optimist Speech Contest-2019

May 10, 2019

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Three students from Seward High participated in the recent State Optimist Oratorical/Speech Contest, held at the Seward Civic Center on Saturday, May 4, 2019 in an all-day speech competition.  The Seward High School students that qualified and participated included Kylie Edgington representing Seward Optimists, Bailey Mooney, representing the Kearney Optimist Club and the Alex Sick, representing the South Sioux City Optimist Club. Kelley Limback and Melissa Pohl serve as their speech coaches at SHS.  

Each student was required to write and present a four to five minute speech on “Is there a fine line between optimism and reality?”  There were two students representing each of the nine Optimist Club Districts in Nebraska, with a total of 18 students in competition.  

The 18 students competing were from Seward, Lincoln, Omaha, Bee, Hubbard, Gretna, Aurora, Hebron, Carleton, Plattsmouth, South Sioux City and Nebraska City.  There were 13 Optimist Clubs that sponsored students in the contest.  

Judges for the event were Emily Petersen, speech coach at Utica Centennial High, Stephanie Shearer, speech teacher and coach at Central City High School and Nancy Schulz, recently retired Speech teacher and coach at East Butler High School.  Anna Downing of Ulysses served as the official timer. 

The local, Seward Optimist Club hosted the event, with Jeanne Gee and Julie McMeekin assisting with registration, Bob Urban hosting the contestant registration and Jan Schulz, Bob Urban and Jeanne Gee coordinating the noon luncheon at the Civic Center for the students, guests and other volunteer Optimists in attendance. Clark Kolterman served as the local liaison for the state contest in Seward and served as one of the Sergeant of Arms during the contest.  They were assisted by Randy Sanley with the Seward Civic Center-the site for the State Oratorical Contest.

State Optimist Oratorical Chair is Linda Leatherman of Hickman. Serving as Emcee for the day was Jon Conyers of the Lincoln West Optimist Club.  Also in attendance was Beryle Lantz, Optimist Governor of the Nebraska District.

At the state level, First Place and $2500 was awarded to Anna Krueger of Lincoln, Second Place and $1500 was awarded to Brooklynn Schmidt of South Sioux City/Hubbard and Third Place was awarded to Erin Lemar of Omaha.   Winning $1000, with Fourth Place was Grace Russell of Gretna and a $500 award and Fifth Place award of $250 was presented to Chloe Irwin with West Pont Optimists.

The Seward entries were all invited to the monthly Seward Optimist meeting on Monday, May 6^that 7:00 at the Sparetime Lounge to present their speeches to the local, sponsoring Seward Optimist Club.  The students were each recognized and were presented a special Optimist Oratorical Medal and certificate of recognition by the local Seward Optimist Club. On the local level, Kylie Edgington placed First, Baily Mooney placed second Alex Sick placed third, with all three qualifying for the state Contest.