The Becker speech team competed at sections recently in Duluth and many members had exceptional performances.
One exceeded all others as junior Emily Brovold captured second place with her production, earning her a trip to the state tournament.
Brovold performed her drama speech based on the television show, the United States of Tara — a Showtime exclusive. The TV program deals with a suburban housewife and mom who lives with dissociative identity disorder — a condition that causes her to shift between multiple identities without warning.
Brovold, who is in her fourth year of speech, says she has 10 minutes to construct the premise of the show and perform it in front of volunteer judges. The production is “graded” according to realism, acting skills, a good introduction and entertainment.
“Since I only have 10 minutes for my speech, I concentrated on three of the characters identities instead of her many identities from the show,” said Emily.
The TV show was created by Diablo Cody, the screenwriter of the movie Juno, who once called Minneapolis home.
“I started in speech in eighth grade just because I was kinda curious about it and my step-dad talked me into it,” said Emily. “I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first went and I was definitely nervous for the first year or so.”
Now, Emily is a polished professional at her craft and actually feels anxious rather than nervous just before she goes on-stage.
“This is something I feel I’m really good at and it’s really fun,” she said.
The speech season begins at the end of January and the competitions occur just about every Saturday and go the entire day.
“We get up around 5:30 a.m. or so, depending on where the event is, then the first round starts around 8 a.m. and goes until about 2-3 p.m.,” she said. “Then there’s the awards stuff afterwards, so it’s quite a long day.”
At sections, Emily performed her routine three times in preliminary rounds, then waited for the scores to see where she got ranked. The top eight people from the competition get ranked and Emily ended up at #2.
Dan Olson is the Bulldog speech team coach.
Other exceptional performances at sections included Emma Kolbinger’s production in Prose and Grace Klapak’s in Storytelling, with both students earning seventh place overall.
The state tournament for Emily is April 21 in Apple Valley.
“Speech has been great and I think everyone who plans to go out into the world should have communication somewhere in their backpack,” Emily said. “It helps you communicate more effectively and helps with your confidence, too.”
