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Bellwood-Antis hosted last night’s speech meet and the B-A Junior High Speech League starting its season off with a bang with one first-place winner and 16 ribbon winners.

Speech team coach Mrs. Kathy Taylor couldn’t have been more proud.

“The students performed well in a variety of categories,” said Mrs. Taylor.  “I was pleased with the amount of work and dedication our student competitors put in and with the high school and parent volunteers that helped us to host the event.”

Freshman Sarah Berkowitz took first in the persuasive category reading her speech “Traumas in Tiaras: The Unethical Actions of Beauty Pageants,” in which she explained how beauty pageants for toddlers are unethical.

“When I was in the room I was pretty confident I did my personal best but I wasn’t so confident that I would score that highly,” Sarah said.

Classmate Emma Corrado took second place in the category impromptu, where she was given 3 topics from which are selected two for contestants to read and talk about afterwards. The first speech she read was about shopping at Walmart and her second speech was about how awful movie adaptations of books are.

“It’s a nervous atmosphere, and you don’t know what the judges want; plus there’s always the fear of getting a topic that you don’t know anything about,” said Emma.

There were many others who placed at the meet,  including Averuy Turek and Caedon Poe who both took 4^th place in the drama category.

Lucy Wilson was another top finisher, landing second in the drama category.

Trinity Riva and Kailynn Hinnish placed 6^th and Rylee Poorman and Lydia Worthing took 4^th in duos.

Along with Corrado, Zach Amato (4^th) and Annie LeGrand (3^rd), helped B-A dominate the impromptu category.

Abi Eckenrod was 4^th in Persuasive, while in poetry Jaylynn Cullop took 7^th and Evan Spalone was 5^th.

In prose, Bridgette Finochio landed a 6^th-place ribbon, and Kate Wallace was 4^th.

B-A will compete again on October 18 in Somerset.