Staci's Life: Melissa takes home TWO first place medals at State Speech

Since Alan and I have never been to one of Melissa's state speech tournaments we thought that we should make the effort her last two years of high school. It was held way up in Coeur d' alene, ID this year. We made the trek with our next door neighbor and bishop Brett and Vibecke Thompson. We decided to take the scenic route on the way up and the freeway route home. On the way up there I got extememly car sick and after a few hours of fighting off the rumbling in my head and stomach I had to ask Brett to pull over as I elimated the contents of my stomach (yeh - yuck). It never got better for the remaining four hours and I was so happy to finally reach our hotel where I quickly crashed. I hate it when that happens.

Brett and Vibecke were the perfect traveling companions. We talked the whole way up and the whole way back. You would think after 20 hours in a van we would run out of things to talk about but we never did. We went on a two mile hike the first day we were there as the speech competition didn't start until 3:00 p.m. that day. I feel like such a giant next to Viebecke here. I am literally a full head taller than she is.

It was raining off and on the whole time that we were there but we had fun. Here are some more pictures of our hike.

We looked forward to trying out new restaurants every day. Vibecke talked and dreamed about how wonderful some oatmeal was that we had for breakfast Friday morning the whole trip. We enjoyed exploring the area for places to see and eat.

Of course the highlight of the trip was watching Melissa give her O.O. speech and watching her perform her Duo Interp. with her partner Hanna Hiller many times. The first afternoon of state was preliminaries and she gave her speech and did her duo twice. Both were very well done. The next morning was the last round of preliminaries and during Melissa's O.O. speech she had a tickle in her throat and as she coughed she had a brain lapse and forgot her next line. As she stumbled to recover she managed to finish it out. That happened twice. She thought that she had sealed her fate and would not make it into the semi's. Much to her surprise the lady gave her a 1-10 with a note at the bottom that said that she knew that she had a tickle in her throat and was not going to penalize her for it. Wow - thank goodness for tender mercies. She made it into the semi's and then the finals.We knew during the final round that she was going to medal.

Her duo speech was hilarious and Melissa was supberb! She had to try out for duo interp. at the being of the year because her speech coach didn't think people would get her sense of humor. I guess she proved him wrong! Melissa was AMAZING! She totally rocked the house and made everyone laugh. During the final round she really poured it on and due to all the pauses they had to take for laughter, their time was a good 3 minutes longer than it was supposed to be. (Good thing time didn't matter at that point.) Melissa was so funny! She did things during that round that she hadn't done before. She made her cheek quiver for a good 5 seconds. She said that it was due to nerves and when it started to quiver she decided to roll with it and did if for as long as she could. I wish I would have recorded the final round because I don't thing that they will ever perform that speech to that level again. (I would have recorded it but Melissa instructed me not to but after wards she said that maybe I could have for the final round - that would be good to know ahead of time!) They had to move the final duo round to the choir room due to the crowd size.

At the awards assembly they announced the duo first and it was fun to watch as they started at 6th place and moved up from there. I saw them hold their breath the whole time and collaspe into each other when 2nd place was announced knowing that they secured 1st place. She was equally thrilled when they awarded her 1st for O.O. Those that she had competed against in duo couldn't believe that she was in O.O. because O.O. is so serious. Melissa had a loyal boy fan club up there.

Her coach was pleased and commented to several people that it is very rare for someone to place first in both catagories at state. He said that he could count on one hand how many times that has been done. Good job Melissa we can't wait to see what you come up with next year.