By Sadie Brockett The Gladbrook-Reinbeck High School Speech Team just ended its season, sending ten total members (in three events) to the state level at Waterloo West High School. Speech members who made the state level include Lily Heinzel, Kelly Brockett, Brittany Yates, Carley Crozier, Maddie Frischmeyer, Sadie Cahalan, Ashley Sieh, Jackson Kiburis, Carter Murphy, and Sadie Brockett. This feature story takes a peek inside one of their practices to explain more about what the speech team does to prepare for contests. Mrs. Ehlers started Improv practice at 3:35 in the choir room. She passed out the schedule for Districts contest on Saturday, January 23, so the participants, Carter Murphy, Bryce Clark, Jesse Royer, Dan Robinett, Brittany Yates, and Carley Crozier, know what times they perform. Then they discussed what the two Improv groups would wear along with other rules for Districts. Then Brittany and Carley drew three situations from an envelope and spent two minutes quietly discussing which of the three situations they wanted to perform for five minutes, how they would start it, and how they would end it. They decided to do the situation “Learning a dance for a big show.” Carley portrayed the role of the nervous but enthusiastic student who was being taught by Brittany, the strict and sassy dance instructor. Brittany would make Carley do squats when she messed up a dance, which happened a lot of the time. Brittany ended the hilarious skit by admitting that Carley really does “suck at dancing.” Next, the second group, which consisted of Carter, Bryce, Dan, and Jesse, discussed their situations. The decided upon “Giving a presentation you haven’t prepared for.” Carter skillfully portrayed the nerd with an exaggerated nasal voice, who tries to correct everything the other students said. Dan played the unprepared student while Bryce helped give him information about rhinos. Jesse was the tough teacher who ended up giving Dan an A+ on his presentation while Carter got a D-. After each skit, Mrs. Ehlers gave the groups pointers about what they could have done better in their performance and suggestions for what they could do in future situations. After that, they decided that each group should perform another situation. This time Brittany and Carley’s situation was “Accidently sending an email to the wrong person”. Carley started the skit by orally writing a hilarious, romantic email to her boyfriend, but she accidently sent it to her teacher instead of her boyfriend. Carley goes to see her teacher, Brittany, and desperately attempts to get her away from her desk so she can delete the email. Brittany ends up reading the email and convincingly fakes crying because she doesn’t have a boyfriend. The practice ended with one final skit from the boys group. Their situation was “Singing the national anthem and you don’t know the words”. Jesse was the announcer who finds out that the regular people can’t sing the National Anthem at the game. He finds three random students in the bleachers, Bryce, Dan, and Carter, and convinces them to sing it. Bryce, Dan, and Carter attempt to sing, but horribly fail. The skit came to a hilarious end with them singing “Born in the USA” instead of the national anthem.