CCS hosting conference speech meet next week

    Chase County Schools will be hosting the SPVA Speech Contest for the first time in seven years next Wednesday, Feb. 22.
    “It rotates every year so it goes to one of the schools in the conference [each year],” speech coach Alex Schilke explained.
    “So it’s our turn this year to do it again.”
    CCS expects all six of the other SPVA schools to bring speech participants. Due to having a full house and needing to use classrooms, all K-12 students will have the day off from classes next Wednesday.
    “Most schools do cancel, that have hosted it, just because we have to use classrooms and it’s hard to have school and speech at the same time,” Schilke said.     
    “That’s kinda normal for most schools to not have school on the day we have conference,” she said
    Schilke said CCS has a full team with all of the entries due to having to cap entries at two per event for SPVA and districts.
    She said that it has been a while since they have had a full team and hopes that will make them pretty competitive next week.
North Platte meet
    On Saturday, the Chase County speech team competed at the Blue and Gold speech meet at North Platte High School.
    The speech meet drew 31 teams and CCS placed 11th overall.
    “It was hosted by North Platte which is a Class A school,” Schilke said. “They extend invitations to as many teams in the state that would like to come.”
    CCS had finalists in three different categories.
    In Serious, Brayan Cazares earned second.
    The trio of George Colton, Zach Herbert and Andrew Wiest performed in the Oral Interpretation of Drama division and placed 6th.
    In Humorous, Paige Nickless finished 11th.
    Here is the CCS schedule for the rest of the season:
    Feb. 18—Ogallala Invite
    Feb. 22—SPVA Conference Meet at Chase County Schools
    March 4—District Speech at Ainsworth
    March 16—State at Kearney High School