.jpg)
KEARNEY — Despite putting a very young team out to compete this year, the Wynot speech competitors put together an impressive finish to the 2025 high school speech season.
Wynot qualifed six entries for the State Speech meet here last week.
• Joslyn Hochstein, Entertainment Speaking
• Alic Wiebelhaus, Entertainment Speaking
• Blake Klug, Humorous Prose
• Bentley Guenther, Humorous Prose
• Ian Haberman, Joslyn Hochstein, Kallie Steffen, Eliza Lange, and Bentley Guenther, Oral Interpretation of Drama.
• Aven Hans0n, Poetry Of those, Klug and the OID team earned State medals.
As a whole, the team tied with Lewiston for 10th place in the Class D2 portion of the Nebraska High School Speech State Championships. Klug finished with a sixth-place medal for his interpretation of a Humorous Speech, “Good Cop, Bad Cop.” The Oral Interpretation of Drama team earned State runner-up honors with their performance of “Matilda.” “I couldn’t be more proud of my team this season,” said Wynot Speech Coach Zoey Wieseler. “While my team is small (just 11 competitors), they are mighty.”
Over half of the Wynot speech team is made up of freshman and underclassmen.
“You wouldn’t know it by watching them. They just get it, which has been great for us as coaches,” Wieseler said. “Normally, a large group of freshman is scary because you know it’s going to require a lot of teaching on our part, but like I said… they just get it.”
The other half of the team is made up of veteran seniors.
Wieseler said those seniors make sure the other competitors work hard.
“They push not only the underclassmen, but also each other to be better,” she said. “I’m so thankful for the time these seniors have given coach Heimes and myself, and I’m so grateful for what they’ve done for Wynot speech and One Act over the years.”
Wieseler said the future of Wynot Speech looks solid.
“For the freshman, I only hope they continue to pursue this activity that they’ve grown to love so much over the course of this season,” she said.
O’Neill St. Mary’s won the Class D2 State title this year, while Stuart earned second-place honors and Chambers finished third. The Top Five was rounded out by Giltner and Arnold.
