After an already successful season, Kennedy’s speech team traveled to Ames, Iowa this past weekend to compete in the elite All State speech competition. Kennedy had 12 groups receive All State nominations this year. Eight of these groups had the honor of performing at All State this past weekend.

At All State, speech teams compete for the possibility to win the critic’s choice award for their performance. In each category of speech, one performance is awarded this title at the end of the competition.

The speech team has won this award for a variety of categories in the past and this year was no different. An all-senior Improv group consisting of members Mikah Lunsford, Rizwan Sidhu, and Caleb Marner won the banner for Kennedy.

“To take home the title our senior year is such a big deal but we don’t even necessarily feel like we won it for ourselves,” Lunsford said. “We feel like we won it for our speech team overall. We had three improv teams who made it to All State this year, and we just knew we wanted at least one of these groups to win so we could have that honor together.”

Lunsford, Sidhu, and Marner aren’t new to the category of Improv. All three have competed in this category since freshmen year. The trio has had the chance to compete together as a team for three of those four years.

“We were really excited because it was our last chance to compete together as a group. We knew we had to do our best and just leave it all out there,” Lunsford said. “We had our planning session and that went well, and then we performed and it just clicked. We could tell it was a successful improv.”

Along with winning the banner, Lunsford said that this All State competition would be unforgettable overall.

“Osborn does a really good job of just making it a big celebration and not even making it about winning the banners,” Lunsford said. “She makes it about just enjoying and celebrating the accomplishments we made.”