Coach Rebecca Meyer-Larson’s Spud speech team topped the NIETOC Tournament of Champions in mid-May in Kansas City — the third time the MHS students have taken first place.

MHS speech and drama teacher Rebecca Meyer-Larson coached the Spud speech team to its third national championship in mid-May. (Photo/Nancy Hanson)

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

Moorhead High School’s high-flying Spud speech team continues its 30-year tradition of topping tournaments this month, scoring the national team championship at NIETOC, the National Individual Event Tournament of Champions held in Kansas City May 16-18 … for the third time. Now they’re getting ready for the biggest one of all, the National Speech and Debate Association tournament that’s coming up in mid-June in Des Moines, Iowa.
To qualify for the elite NIETOC tournament, held in Kansas City May 16-18, the Spuds first nabbed the Minnesota championship in April. “This year, we won every single one of the nine weekly contests that lead up to the state event,” reports Rebecca Meyer-Larson, who has coached Spuds’ speech and drama for 38 years. Earning points as individuals, team members racked up a group total of 128 points – double the scores of runners-up Eastview and Apple Valley.
She adds, “This was our ninth state sweepstakes win.”
Now the members of Spud Speech are preparing for their final major event of the year – the National Speech and Debate Tournament coming up in mid-June in Des Moines, Iowa. The team is currently collecting donations to insure all 70 of those who’ve polished performances can afford to take part in the year’s culmination.
The speech contests, in which Moorhead regularly excels, are different from the way other Spuds competitors seek to dominate the record books. Meyer-Larson explains that members of her team face their opponents on their own, not as a collective group. “Each of them competes against every other speaker as an individual. That means some of our members come up against each other in the same event,” she says. “They’re judged and awarded points based on their own presentations.”
The Public Speaking categories include original oratory, informative speaking, extemporaneous speaking, and discussion. A second group, the Interpretive categories, includes dramatic interpretation, humorous interpretation, duo interpretation, creative expression, serious interpretation of prose, serious interpretation of poetry, and serious interpretation of drama.
Participating in speech requires keeping a demanding schedule from January through March. Each Friday, members of the team climb aboard buses, heading for one of the weekly tournaments. All but one of the nine meets are hosted by schools across the Twin Cities; that ninth takes place in Moorhead. The Spud speakers collectively dominated each of them, amassing a season total of 152 points. Second-place team Willmar totaled just 45, and St. Paul Tech, 30.
Speech teachers judge the competitions, writing substantive critiques of each who takes the podium. Reviewing and ranking each contestant is a critical component for helping the students polish their presentations. “Every weekend, we judge each others’ kids. We end up coaching all of them,” the coach points out.
A good number of Spud competitors packs up and heads out to those meets when the school day ends each Friday. “If we have the funding, we take two buses,” Meyer-Larson notes. “At the least, we fill up one.” She adds that MHS activities director Dean Haugo has been “pretty great” to the team, funding its matches on par with other sports-based activities. “It’s not part of the culture to support the fine arts on par with athletics in most of the schools. “Though our administrators all have a sports background, they also recognize that we’ve got a group of kids here who work their butts off … who are serious about changing the world, one word at a time.”
One of the hardest things about running the speech team, she says, is supporting her large group of students facing substantial travel costs in the course of the year. “The financial divide is real,” she acknowledges. “We feel very, very lucky. We have more support from our school and our parents than most of the other teams we compete against.”
Nevertheless, a substantial gap remains. She has launched a campaign to raise $10,000 to bring every one of the 70 team members to the national finals in Des Moines. As of last week, Spud Speech was less than 10% of the way to its goal. Corporate and individual donations can be made online at www.SpudSpeech.org.
“These are shiny kids with compelling stories to tell,” she reflects. “If a certain population of our school isn’t represented, we go out looking for them.
“I’ve seen lives literally changed by getting involved in speech,” she goes on. “They listen to others’ stories at every competition. That exposes them to lots of points of view and people from all kinds of backgrounds. It’s very competitive. They all want to win.” But in the meantime, she says, “They’re learning from each other.”