The Speech Club is a competitive speaking activity that contains 13 different categories. The coach of the PCSH speech team, Ms. Neri, explains speech as being similar to track; each member competes in a different activity, but all are still a part of the bigger team. The categories in speech include creative expression, discussion, duo interpretation, extemporaneous reading, extemporaneous speaking, great speeches, humorous interpretation, informative speaking, original oratory, serious drama interpretation, serious poetry interpretation, serious prose interpretation, and storytelling. Their season in made up of invitational tournaments that take place on Saturday mornings. Invitational tournaments are like team practices for sections since the majority of the time, the member has to practice on their own. Although they recite their pieces on their own, the team does meet once in a while. At their meetings, they polish up on gestures to do during the piece, eye contact with the audience and other fine tuning. How well they do at sections will determine if they go to state; only the top 3 schools are taken to the state tournament.

Alicia and Raven compete as partners in the category of Duo Interpretation. Duo interpretation features two students interpreting together one or more selections from a single published source, an anthology of prose, poetry, and/or dramatic literature serious and/or humorous, with literary merit and appropriate to the readers. The twosome has been doing extremely well this season competing in their favorite & most competitive category. Out of a total of five competitions, the two have placed first four times and second place once. Alicia proudly states that one time the two beat forty-seven other schools in duo.

Alicia believes the main focus of speech is to help students with public speaking and for some, getting over the fear of being in the spotlight of a large crowd. Raven jokingly states that the main focus in speech is “winning and being the best! And something about interpreting the words falls in there somewhere…” What pushed them into joining the speech team was their love for performing. They feel that every member brings something different to the team, from personality to energy. Every participant is important to the group because if just one person is missing, it changes the whole meet. The most challenging obstacle Raven thinks the team faces is waking up at six in the morning to meet at school before competitions and also not to take criticism personally when being judged. But on the bright side, having fun and meeting new people is not a challenge for the team.