Two very tired kids arrived home at 2 am this morning after a very long car ride on bad road conditions. I was a nervous wreck. I had watched the news before going to bed and wished I hadn't as the weather forecasters talked about how awful things were right in the area the kids were coming from and it was moving north.
Stephen and Anna placed third in the duos and will be moving on to sections. They have room for improvement which I think they both knew as Thursday night they were still deciding exactly what the piece would include to make sure it was under the 8 minute time limit. They can now spend the next two weeks working on the specifics of the piece and making each as good as they can make it.
Rachel and her friend Hannah (the only two 7th graders on the team) did not qualify for sections. Rachel was pretty disappointed. Everyone on the team said they were shocked at the number of participants in the category. Several of the kids who have been in speech for five and six years said there had never been even 12 kids in the category and 12 qualify for sections, so in previous years she would have qualified just by being in the Storytelling category. This year there were 16 storytellers at subsections and only 12 move on. Storytelling was tied with dramatic duo (Stephen and Anna's category) for the most entries. Technically duo had 19 but 3 didn't reach the ending round (I didn't understand last night, if they were no-shows who had signed up and gotten sick or something or if they were disqualified during one of the rounds.)
I'm sure Stephen will post something on his blog at some point this weekend about his reactions to the meet and I will encourage Rachel to post her thoughts and reflections on her first season competing in speech. She said she was really thrown by the timers in the room, all three showed the time remaining differently and she was very conscious of the time and felt like she kept forgetting her place in the story. That will be something for the team to work on next year, will be to help kids adjust to being timed, as none of the meets up to this point have worried about the time component of the categories.
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Oma & Opa had checked the weather too and it was hard not to call in the middle of the night and check on the kids. I was hoping it was another case of a weather prediction that did not happen!
Stephen and Rachel, we are so proud of you! I can not even imagine performing like that and the whole timer thing would be a big thing to overcome. We know that Rachel has learned lots and will eagerly anticipate next year in speech. We know that Stephen and Anna will have a busy time sharpening up their presentation and keeping it under the time limit smoothly these next two weeks.
Thank you so much for sharing!
Love, Oma & Opa
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