Plainfield East Speech concluded their season Feb. 15 in Warrenville after a season of both team growth and success. 

Coached by Katherine Fairfield-Meneses and Erin Portman, the Bengals put together one the largest and most committed rosters since speech began at East. Some of the most decorated members of the team included senior captains Daniella Torres and Stella Abarca in the Dramatic Duet Acting (DDA) category.

“The energy around speech team was completely different,” said Abarca, “We made the team more fun, and we got more people involved.” 

Torres and Abarca placed first at regular season meets such as Romeoville, Willowbrook, Glenbard South, as well as at Conference in Romeoville and Regionals at Neuqua Valley

Another area of achievement was the Performance in the round (PIR) category, which was brought on during the postseason for the first time. The 11 person team was able to place second at regionals during their first ever performance. It contributed to the most people East has ever taken to regionals.

“It made the speech team bigger, we connected with the people who had been in speech team before us,” said Kelechi Ohale, senior, “it cultivated a kind of a family and a love for speech.”

Other consistent finalists were senior Nathan Matzig and junior Nidhruv Murali. The team attributes the victories to an enthusiastic culture in speech that has been growing for multiple seasons.

“It has been growing for several years,” said Portman, “We have some students who have really put in the time to make sure that their events are really good, but also that they are bringing in other people.”

At sectionals, amidst tough competition from schools such as York and Neuqua Valley, the team unfortunately didn’t qualify for state; however, they still have a positive outlook on the year as a whole.

“There are some things you can’t control with speech,” said Abarca, “but, I don’t think that diminished how well we did throughout the whole season in general.”

With momentum trending in the right direction, speech is still always looking for more members for next year. There is a belief that speech not only helps in high school, but later in life as well. 

“It directly translates to everything, next time you have a class project, or anybody in business doing presentations to people,” said Portman, “having presence and having the ability to connect to people in a variety of settings and a variety of purposes is universally useful.”