By Mark Coddington
mark.coddington@theindependent.com

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Independent/Scott Kingsley Marie Lesiak is congratulated by Hannah Davis (center left), with teammates, (from right) Laura Wirth, Catherine McGowan and Katie Harris (far left), after making the finals at the state speech tournament at UNK. Lesiak placed sixth in the poetry competition. Independent/Scott Kingsley Central Catholic's Tim Dvorak practices his extemporaneous speech before competing in the final round of the state speech tournament Tuesday evening. Dvorak finished fifth in the competition. Click Thumbnails to View

"We're not nerds!" she exclaims with an exasperated smile.

After a day in which hundreds of high-schoolers could be seen giving speeches to walls or, in one boy's case, his bathroom stall that might be a tough declaration to take seriously.

But the scene at the high school state speech meet at the University of Nebraska at Kearney is overwhelmingly one of granite-nerved competitors putting months and even years of work on the line not unlike a few other state championship competitions also held this month.

The two-day meet, which concludes today, is the culmination of a two- to three-month season of weekly meets. And for Davis and the other Central Catholic team members, Tuesday was one final chance to play spoiler to a few favorites' championship hopes, says Central Catholic coach Pam Krall.

Nebraska high school speech's nine events are mostly individual contests (though duets and small groups each have an event), but a team championship requires a strong showing across the competitions.

And though Class C1's powerhouses Raymond Central and David City lumber far above the pack as teams, Central Catholic's speakers hope going into Tuesday to crash the party in any events they could.

The day isn't off to a very promising start. Munching on a sandwich, Krall grimaces at the judges' ballots for her speakers' first rounds. She sees a lot of rankings of second, third and fourth among groups of five or six.

After two rounds, just six of the 16 entries in each event will qualify for the final round, and Central Catholic's eight entries will need a big boost in the afternoon session to move on.

Senior Laura Wirth has been one of the team's early bright spots, receiving high marks for her informative and persuasive speeches. With her parents, Don and Denise Wirth of Grand Island, in tow, she races across campus during the second round. She gives a smooth, memorized informative speech about the Guiness Book of World Records complete with a sophisticated, book-like visual aid with magnetized stick-ons.

As soon as she finishes, she rushes back across campus to give another perfectly polished and professional speech from memory this time on complaining.

It's a routine she and her parents have perfected over the past few years "a lot of Saturdays," says Don.

In fact, after giving her speeches dozens of times since January, one of her biggest challenges can be resisting the tendency to go on autopilot.

"Sometimes I find myself thinking of things up there that have nothing to do with speech, like what I'm going to do later in the day," she says.

Back at the team's home base, Davis, a junior, and seniors Marie Lesiak and Tim Dvorak play a quiz game with friends to ease the anxiety of waiting to find out whether they're headed for the final round and a state medal.

They've been heavily involved in speech for the past few years, attending summer camps, skipping other school activities to go to meets and regularly getting up at 5 a.m. for Saturday meets.

But for all three, the work is more than worth it.

"Speech saved my life," Davis says. "I don't know how fun my high school experience would have been if I didn't have all those memories from speech."

Dvorak plays football and powerlifts, but he also specializes in extemporaneous speaking, which requires students to write and perform a speech on a randomly chosen current events topic within an hour. (Dvorak gives his speeches on Tuesday on Israel, Ralph Nader and stem-cell research without notecards.)

Within the speech world, they're considered, well, nerds.

"We're the geekiest of the geeks," Dvorak says proudly. "But we're the ones who are going to be rich."

Krall, for her part, disagrees with the stereotype. Extemp, as it's commonly known, is far more difficult to do well than the other events, she says.

"Extemp is the one event that separates the men from the boys," Krall says. "If you can do extemp, you've got it made in the shade."

A few minutes later, the theme from "Mission: Impossible" lets students know that the qualifiers for the final round have been posted. Cheers go up and hugs are exchanged as a slide is shown on a large projector for each event.

The news is good for Central Catholic: Six of the team's eight entries have made finals, including Dvorak, Lesiak's poetry and both of Wirth's speeches.

Krall gathers the school's finalists, dispersing them to their competition rooms with words of encouragement.

"OK, kids, you've got your work cut out," she says. "We're spoiling it, remember."

The initial reports from the final round are positive, but the competition is fierce. At the evening's award session, Central Catholic students take home two fifth-place finishes, three sixths and an eighth, enough for sixth place as a team out of 39 schools competing.

As the students happily don their medals, Krall says she's proud of the seniors' years of work and excited about the experience that the team's underclassmen got from the meet. They'll be chattering about ideas for next year all the way home, she says.

But for now?

"It's been a 13-hour day," Krall says, smiling and looking at her watch. "Now, I'm just tired."

Area medalists at Tuesday's state speech contest:

Kevin Carder, Shalynne Figgner, Brandon Gottier, William Kusek and Halie Smith, Boone Central Class B drama, 2nd

William Kusek, Boone Central Class B humorous prose, 4th

Sierra Koelling, Ord Class C1 entertainment, 2nd

Makayla Jones, GICC Class C1 poetry, 5th

Tim Dvorak, GICC Class C1 extemporaneous, 5th

Marie Lesiak, GICC Class C1 poetry, 6th

Lauren Geiger, Doniphan-Trumbull Class C1 extemporaneous, 6th

Laura Wirth, GICC Class C1 persuasive, 6th

Jacob Nordhues, GICC Class C1 persuasive, 6th

Laura Wirth, GICC Class C1 informative, 8th