Six MFL MarMac students receive all-state individual speech nominations

By Audrey Posten, Times-Register

Six MFL MarMac high school students have received all-state individual speech nominations, continuing a string of success for a program that had a record 40 participants this year. Freshmen Maria Stavroplus and Jacob Schellhorn, sophomore Clare Grau, juniors Jonah Wille and Will Koether and senior Abby Schellhorn earned straight one scores at the March 12 state competition in Clear Lake, putting them in the mix for the prestigious honor.

They will all perform at the IHSSA All-State Festival at the University of Northern Iowa on March 28, joining just 464 other outstanding performers from across the state. That total was whittled down from over 9,000 students who started the individual speech season at the district level.

According to speech coach Angie Killian, of the 40 schools represented at the state competition, only three—Maquoketa Valley, Dubuque Senior and Decorah—had more all-state nominations than MFL MarMac.

“We’re in the top echelon,” she reflected.

That achievement wasn’t surprising, said Wille, considering the number of performers MFL MarMac had at state.

“It’s really important to mention that, yeah, there are six of us going to all-state, but there were 18 of us at state. All but one received at least an overall one or better,” he shared. “That was a really good feat for MFL MarMac speech.”

Stavroplus is the third in her family—after older brothers Walter and Nick—to earn an all-state nomination. She performed the piece “Lost in the Brass,” from the musical Band Geeks, in the solo musical theatre category.

“It’s about a girl whose band is getting defunded and this jock from the football team is going to fail high school. In order to graduate, he has to join the band. He just walked out, and she thought that was her last chance and saw all her hopes slip away. Throughout the song, she’s gaining confidence,” Stavroplus explained.

The song isn’t well known, which Stavroplus said helped her all-state case. The judges heard something new.

“The judges really liked it. They said I had a powerful voice and a lot of confidence. I had really good facials and stayed in character the whole time,” she said.

The freshman also credited her coaches, assistants Diane Fisk and Cheri Moser, for their help. 

“I had a lot of anxiety doing this for the first time, especially as a freshman, but I got the opportunity to watch in past years, when my brothers did it, and I got a lot of support from my team,” she added.

Jacob Schellhorn is one of two MFL MarMac students nominated in prose. The humorous piece focused on baseball great Ted Williams’ recollection of his first childhood homerun.

“I picked it because I like baseball so much and I could relate to it,” he said. “The judges laughed through the whole thing, the audience was laughing.”

Killian and Schellhorn worked together to select the story from a baseball book.

“I have different places, different sources, I use to find materials that appeal to audiences. All year long, I’m always looking. And when I find something funny, I’m looking for a student who would make that script come alive,” she said. “I had no idea what would work for Jacob until I had some conversations with him.”

For sophomore Grau, 2022 marked her second straight all-state nomination in storytelling. She did it with the children’s book “The Day the Crayons Came Home,” a sequel to last year’s “The Day the Crayons Quit.” Grau was not able to speak about her performance last week, but her teammates and coaches shared glowing remarks.

The story, explained assistant coach Erin O’Brien, was about crayons who were lost along the way and had been through horrible experiences. They were all writing postcards to their previous owners so they could come home.

“She worked really hard to create different characterizations and voices for each one. She experimented with a lot of them,” O’Brien said. “She had an Australian crayon, a crayon that was really sickly sounding because it had been chewed and barfed up by the dog, a little kid crayon, a whiny crayon that gave up being disgusting pea green and became Esteban the Magnificent.”

“During her performance, she was also really physical,” O’Brien added. “It gives another element to the characterization.”

Koether said Grau’s performance was fun to watch because she brings so many unique characters to life. 

“Watching Clare is fun because it’s almost like she has multiple personality syndrome. Every single character she brings into it is a different person, and it doesn’t look like Clare anymore,” he shared.

Wille was also nominated in storytelling, for the piece “Clark the Shark.” The children’s book focuses on a young shark who’s the biggest fish at his school. 

“He’s always really over the top with everything, very loud, very wild in general,” said Wille. “The tagline of the story is ‘There’s a time and a place for everything,’ and he learns when the right time to be wild and loud is, and when it’s time to be more serious and productive. Overall, it’s a fun way to convey a lesson to little kids.”

Wille has competed in storytelling for several years and seeks pieces that are funny and allow him to show off his vocal abilities. That’s easiest with books that have at least four or five characters.

“That way I can really show off that vocal variety, different tone, different dynamics,” he noted. “That’s what drew me to the book.”

Like Schellhorn, Koether performed in the prose category, but chose a more serious piece titled “Thirty-two Third Graders and One Class Bunny.” The section he chose was part of the larger book, however, and never actually talked about the third graders or the bunny, he quipped.

Rather, it focused on a male teacher who was listing the duties of his job. 

“He talks about singing happy birthday 657 times and fixing stuff. In the beginning, it’s almost like he’s annoyed,” Koether said. “He then goes into a story about how he was laminating artwork for his students one night and gets his tie caught, and he starts getting sucked in. That’s the high point of the story, which I feel the judges really liked because I went from low and almost annoyed to ‘Oh, my gosh,’ he’s scared he’s going to die. Then it settles back down and, toward the end, he starts getting into things he’s not as annoyed about. He talks about finding children friends, knowing when children need help, when they haven’t gotten enough sleep, and he becomes more satisfied with his job as a teacher.”

“I really liked that, in everything you do, there are things you hate and things you enjoy. It’s always about finding the thing you enjoy that’s greater than what you were annoyed about,” he continued. 

This is Koether’s second all-state nomination in the category. His ability to convey varying emotions set him over the top. 

“One thing I’ve always been told is I’m very good with facial expressions, really showing what I’m feeling as I step into the mind of that character,” he said. 

A rule that requires students to read from a script while standing in place helps with that, he noted.

“Part of the rules are you can’t move very much, so it makes you have to convey emotion with your body, your gestures and your face,” Koether said.

Abby Schellhorn is heading to all-state for the second time as well, but in original oratory, a category she tried for the first time this season.

Killian described original oratory as an informative speech where students share a story or message about their life, but also tie it into other aspects people can relate to. 

Schellhorn’s piece, “Individuality is the New Popularity,” touched on how she’d been bullied in middle school for being her own person, but also infused references to celebrities like Lady Gaga, Caitlin Jenner and Taylor Swift.

“It was my own story with a few twists and turns of other people’s stories into it,” Schellhorn said. “I talked about how conformity used to be the standard of popularity, and now it’s changing to be your own person instead of fitting in to different cliques.”

“It worked well because I felt a connection with it. My own personality and feelings shined through,” she explained.

It was a good mixture of content and delivery, according to Killian.

“The content was appealing and she delivered it well,” the coach stated. “She was persuading her audience to not conform to popularity, to be their own person. It worked because of the relevance of it, because of what’s going on in the world.”

Killian likes that students get to share so many unique aspects of themselves through speech. The continued growth of the program is partially attributable to that.

“When people hear about speech, they think, ‘Oh, they’re just standing up and giving a dull speech in front of people.’ It’s more like Saturday Night Live skits and funny stuff,” she said, adding that, of course, “Some is serious, some makes you cry.”

Assistant Erin O’Brien agreed.

“Speech really opens up an avenue for creativity, where being unique is not frowned upon,” she remarked. “There’s a lot of pressure in high school to fit in, but in speech, to fit in means being yourself and being unique and taking risks. That’s encouraged. You really get to blossom and experiment with the type of person you are.”