IU speech team tradition worth talking about

The IU speech team has a tradition of success, and this year's team has continued the run. \nPlacing in the top ten at Nationals in April for the 11th consecutive year, the current team members are looking to keep the run going next year.\n"The team actually has a lot of room to grow next year, which is very exciting," said junior Melanie Loehwing, team president for next year. "We're graduating so many people and I think we only have seven or eight members returning, so we're looking to take on probably between 15 and 20 novices. It's exciting because it will be a growing year and we already know of a bunch of high-schoolers who are coming to IU who are very good in high school speech. I'm excited about the team next year."\nThat excitement stemmed from the achievements the team had throughout the year.\n"We did great at a lot of our regular season tournaments," senior Amanda Thompson said. "We won quite a few of them and we got second in State.\n"We did surprisingly well. We had a very small team and going into Nationals we were competing against teams that were two, three times our size. Our hope was we'd place in the top ten, which we did. It was a very young team and a very small team. I feel we did very well this year considering our situation."\nThe team's Nationals performance was led by senior Joshua Georgen, who placed eighth in pentathalon, the category that recognizes the top speakers at the tournament. Georgen placed fourth in Prose Interpretation, finished among the top-12 speakers in the country in the Rhetorical Criticism event, Informative Speaking and After Dinner Speaking and placed in the top-24 in Duo Interpretation.\nThree other students finished well in their respective events: Loehwing placed in the top-12 in Rhetorical Criticism and the top-24 in Duo Interpretation with Georgen, Thompson finished in the top-24 in the After Dinner Speaking and Rhetorical Criticism categories and senior Deena Fogle placed in the top-24 in Extemporaneous Speaking.\nThompson said the National tournament was a much different experience than any other tournament she's competed in.\n"(Nationals) is five full days and you actually do four rounds of each event," Thompson said. "There's so many more competitors. At regular season tournaments there might only be 10-20 teams, but at Nationals you're talking about every team from across the country, which can range from 50 to 100 different teams. It is much more competitive."\nJunior Kara Glennon said the team's Nationals experience has motivated them to work over the summer because of their close finish.\n"We just barely squeaked into 10th place," junior Kara Glennon said. "The year before that we had seventh, before that fourth, before that I think third. So we all said that we're going to work really hard over the summer and everybody's been pretty much sticking to that."\nLoehwing said team members are planning on recruiting over the summer.\n"Those of us who are returning members are all working on our speeches now and we've been doing a bit of recruiting," Loehwing said. "We've been meeting with new members, meeting with people who are interested in the team over the summer and telling them about how they would get involved." \nThompson said next year's team should be a strong force because there will be a core of returning juniors. \n"They're mature enough that I can really see a lot of them breaking at Nationals," Thompson said. "We have a very strong set of seniors, also. Both of them have been in rounds at Nationals before and I feel that experience will help them a lot next year. They have great leadership, which is very important for the team. I believe we'll carry on the tradition of being in the top ten in the nation next year and I think there's a good chance we'll win State next year"