CCS Speech Team fourth at Sutherland

Chase County’s Speech Team advanced eight to the finals of Saturday’s Sutherland Speech Meet on its way to a fourth place team finish.
CCS was one of 11 teams at the meet. Paxton placed first, followed by Wallace and Sutherland ahead of CCS. Also taking part were Southwest, Dundy County Stratton, Garden County, South Platte, Arthur County, Hayes Center and Hitchcock County.
Andrew Wiest led the way with a first place finish in Humorous. Paige Nickless placed fourth in the category.
CCS also placed two in Informative; Kevin Dannatt was fourth and Zach Herbert placed fifth.
In other events, Wiest was third in Serious, Jayme Gittlein placed fifth in Persuasive, Beau Weiss was sixth in Extemporaneous and Katelyn Stamm was sixth in Poetry.
The team has battled illness and absences over the last couple weeks and was short-handed at Sutherland.
Other participants were Harley Markee in Persuasive and Emily Randall in Poetry. Schilke said both were in the top eight of their events.
“I hope we can get everyone to a meet soon. Illness has impacted us the last few weekends. Even with missing competitors, I am proud of our team. They take the feedback provided to them each week and work to improve their performances,” Schilke said.
She’s hopeful CCS will be almost full this weekend at the Blue and Gold Invite in North Platte Saturday.
The invite is one of the largest meets the team will travel to and features large and small school divisions.
“Blue and Gold is a great meet for us because we get to see all classes of schools from A-D-2. This provides a melting pot of competition. It is also a fun meet for our novice speakers because they get to compete in novice divisions,” Schilke said.