Three Kee High School Speech students receive All-State nominations for Individual Speech


Pictured above, left to right, Allison Donley, Owen Henkes, and Ella Strong ...

Despite the havoc caused by the COVID-19 virus with scheduled events during the month of March and beyond, the Kee High School Speech program had three of its students forge ahead to earn All-State nominations for this year’s Individual Speech competition. Kee Speech participants Allison Donley, Owen Henkes and Ella Strong each received the All-State accolades after a refined State Speech process in early March.

The Iowa High School Speech Association (IHSSA) opted to cancel this year’s State Speech Contest and All-State Individual Speech Festival scheduled for March 8 and March 30, respectively. The IHSSA did grant schools the opportunity to schedule smaller State Speech competitions within their local area, which MFL/MarMac High School did March 8 in Monona, inviting Kee High School Speech members to participate.

Each smaller State contest was required to utilize credited judges whose All-State nominations would then be honored by the IHSSA. However, those All-State nominees would not have the added honor of performing at the All-State Individual Speech Festival this year, which had been scheduled to be held March 30 at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. The Festival otherwise annually honors the best individual speech members from the state in each of the competition events.

Three judges critiqued all events in one room at the State Contest hosted by MFL/MarMac High School. “It was actually a very entertaining day and ran very smoothly,” Kee High School Speech Coach Tammy Manning shared. “Usually there would be a center (room) that would just be for one event specifically: like storytelling only, or prose in one room and all improvisational acting in another room. But this contest was small enough where all events were in one room, so you could just stay in one room and watch a variety of events... similar to how the All-State Festival is run, with several events performing in one room.”

Once that March 8 contest was complete, the three judges at the MFL/MarMac State Contest selected their All-State nominations and those nominations included a trio of Kee High School students. Allison Donley was nominated for her Expository Address entitled “Phobias: Why are we Scared?”; Owen Henkes was nominated for his Improvisational Acting; and Ella Strong was nominated for her Literary Program entitled “Who Needs a Sister Anyways?”.

“It’s unfortunate, of course, for the students to not be able to finish out the season, but they were very fortunate to be able to attend a local State contest, where many schools were not as fortunate,” Coach Manning said. “Even though our All-State students - two of them being seniors - will not be able to experience the All-State Festival this year, I want all of the senior speech students to know how extremely proud I am of their accomplishments and positive leadership during this unusual situation.”