The Bellevue West speech team placed third at the 2021 District A-3 speech competition which took place virtually on March 6. 

Districts took place via Zoom this year as a result of COVID-19. With five more state qualifiers than 2019 and three event champions, coach Becca Hier said she takes pride in her team’s performance. 

“We really didn’t know what the season was going to look like,” Hier said. “I wasn’t sure how much the kids would be excited about it. But this team just kind of walked in and said, ‘we got this covered, we get that it’s weird, we get that it’s virtual, but we love what we do.’”

The team has one more week to prepare for state speech, which will also be held virtually on March 20. The team used class time and practices on Tuesday and Thursday nights to add finishing touches to their speeches. The team will also practice throughout spring break, leading up to the state competition.

“We’re looking at the ballots that we received from our district judges, and that will help determine what we need to do to be better at state,” Hier said. “We’ll make writing changes this week. And then next week, we will focus on the delivery of their performances.”

Despite the challenges of this year, Hier said there was at least one perk of a virtual competition. 

“As much as we love competing in person, there’s nothing like sitting in this classroom, watching the kids qualify for state and then watching them celebrate,” Hier said. “Sometimes you can be overtaken by everybody else that happens to be watching the award ceremony. We really just got an opportunity to just be team members; that’s not something that we will get with other years.”