On November 8th, in room 605, Quartz Hill High School held a speech contest. This year’s contest had eight contestants, with a panel of three judges: Mrs. Armstrong, Mrs. Wisdom, and Mrs. Stanley. The contestants were judged on the length, content, delivery, passion, and the emotion of their speeches.

This year’s prompt for the speech contest was to address the theme: “Your song, your story, your voice for leadership.” The speech contest began with students going one at a time to give their speech to the judges before anxiously waiting for the results. The judges came to the conclusion that the two winners of the speech contest were Kevin Lee and Shai Anne Irving. These two students will move on to the district-wide speech contest.

Winner Shai Anne Irving said, “I saw an opportunity to influence others with my words, so I took it!”

Quartz Hill’s speech contest has many benefits to offer to the contestants. One of these many benefits is to help improving students’ ability to give a speech under pressure, as they performed in front of judges. Also, students competed in the speech contest just for fun. Participant Evelyne Copeland said, “The speech contest was really fun. I gained a lot from the experience.”

One of the competition judges, Mrs. Armstrong, said, “The contestants were really good this year. The turnout was also really promising this year too.”

The speech contest chose two promising students to compete in the Oratory Speech Contest held by the Antelope Valley Union High School District, where many different schools will compete against each other. Quartz Hill chose winners Kevin Lee and Shai Anne Irving to represent our high school.

The Oratory speech contest will be held Tuesday, December 5, 2017. For participating in the Oratory speech contest, every participant receives a $50 check, but the winner of the Oratory speech contest will receive a $100 check. The winner has the chance to compete at a region-wide level, with greater stakes and rewards to offer. Much luck to Kevin Lee and Shai Anne Irving when they compete in the district-wide Oratory Speech Contest.