Speech Team Success
Team members win team and individual awards while gaining valuable speaking skills.
Montrose Speech Team members have been called to greatness as poised and persuasive speakers in a number of competitions throughout the 2014-2015 school year, winning a team trophy at the thirty-team, highly competitive Holly Festival in Natick.
The team, coached by Caroline Fisher and speech alumna Kate Fitzgerald ’10, boasts record numbers of participants. Both new and experienced team members have tried new categories and come home with trophies. At the Gracia Burkill Memorial Tournament in Natick, Nathalie Falcao ‘17 placed 5th in Novice Reading and Nathalie, Erin Golden ‘17, Katie Randall ’19 and Annie Miklus ‘18 all had first place rounds. The Dighton-Rehoboth Tournament saw a second place finish for Erin in Novice Reading. Katie Sidhu ’16 placed 6th in Impromptu and Molly Cahill ’16 6th in Original Oratory at the Lincoln-Sudbury Tournament, and Molly won 3rd place in Original Oratory at Newton South.
The true team effort came at the Holly, when Montrose as a team won a trophy. The Looking Glass reporter and Speech Team member Erin Golden ’17 has more:
The team took home its first sweepstakes award in the past several years from the Holly Tournament in Natick. In addition to the team award, Nora Cahill ’19 and Molly Cahill ‘16 also won individual trophies in their categories of Novice Reading and Drama Audition, respectively. The team awards work like this: the more people you bring, the more points you get. Since we go up against larger schools it’s hard to level out the playing field, but we did it!
Everyone was ecstatic, and I’m pretty sure one of our coaches was even seen hugging and gently caressing the Nutcracker trophy. Needless to say, both coaches are very proud of all we’ve accomplished this year. Ms. Fisher stated, “I can’t believe how much this team has grown in just two short years. I am so proud of the hard work and accomplishments of each and every member as well as the strength of the team as a whole. As one of the two coaches, I support and organize the group, but the students themselves are one hundred percent responsible for all of the successes and recognition that they have received this year, and they should be immensely proud of that.”
Speech tournaments allow students to hone their public speaking skills, poise and persuasiveness in a competitive setting. Each tournament features at least a dozen events, ranging from Original Oratory, in which a student composes and delivers a persuasive commentary on a topic of her choice, to Impromptu, in which a student draws three topics, chooses one and has six minutes in which to prepare and deliver a presentation. The team faces its next challenge in the upcoming Mardi Gras Tournament in Shrewsbury on February 28.
An independent school for girls in grades 6-12 guided by the teachings of the Catholic Church.
