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   This weekend brought yet another early, Saturday morning for the Walker Talkers of WHA Schools! However, the team did not have to get up as early as normal as they competed just forty-five minutes away from Walker in Bemidji at the 19th Annual Bemidji Lumberjack Speech Invitational. This tournament is traditionally slightly different from the previous tournaments that the Walker Talkers have on the schedule each year for a couple of reasons. First off, the tournament is an invitational which means that teams are sent an invitation to compete and cannot openly register to face off in Bemidji unless opened to all teams by the contest manager. Secondly, because of the invitational style, the competition is from primarily North-central and North-west Minnesota with the exception of one team from the Iron Range that makes the trek - Mountain Iron - Buhl. The Walker Talkers do not normally see much of the competition we see in Bemidji which usually makes for interesting results.

   This weekend the Walker Talkers had four speakers qualify for the final round from their strong performances given in the preliminary rounds of speaking. Lily Burns had a strong showing in Humor placing third in the largest category at Bemidji! WHA had two poetry finalists! Layla Krueckeberg placed fourth with her poetry program titled “Good Enough” and Zoe Cox placed 3rd with her poetry program themed on “Kindness”. Finally, Walker Talker captain, Madison Kendrick, placed sixth in Prose. The Prose final round boasted five state qualifiers from last year all up against each other and facing off in a highly-competitive final round. Additionally, one of the Walker Talker novice speakers, Elaina Dascalos, placed the highest of any novices in her category and was awarded the “Future Star Speaker” Award in Prose. The team as a whole just missed placing in the team sweepstakes, falling to the teams from Mountain Iron - Buhl and

Hawley.

   This is a big week for the Walker Talker Speech Team as there will be over 25 teams and close to 200 speakers along with their coaches and speech judges in Walker at WHA Schools this coming Saturday at the 52nd Annual Chuck Beckman Speech Tournament. Before that, the

JV speakers will travel to Pequot Lakes for some added competition at the Pequot Lakes Junior

High Tournament.

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