Wearing a suit at 7 a.m. on a Saturday isn’t what anyone would describe as a fun weekend plan. But for the approximately 20 students on the Oak Park and River Forest High School speech team, that’s exactly what we do.
The speech season starts in October, when members begin meeting with coaches to start writing or looking for their pieces. For at least the past four years, OPRF has begun their speech season at the York Royal Court Tournament hosted by York High School.
Our tournaments start around 8 a.m. and typically end between 4 and 5 p.m.. However, we tend to get to OPRF between 5:45 and 6 in the morning to allow for warm ups and travel time. While this time frame may seem a tad ridiculous, the speech team has given me enough joy to compensate for the hours I spend at other high schools.
This past weekend OPRF competed at the 17th annual Bolingbrook Tournament of Dreams. With 34 high schools crammed into one cafeteria when we weren’t competing, the room felt alive with all of the conversations and laughter. When there are that many schools packed into one room it’s inevitable schools will begin talking. By the time it’s announced who made it to the final round for their events friendships have been formed and social media handles exchanged. Sometimes we will never see these kids again. Sometimes we’ll compete and laugh with these kids for the next three seasons.
As February inches closer, so does the end of the speech season. On Jan. 31 OPRF will attend the last invitational tournament of the 2025-2026 speech season at The Glenbrook North High School Tournament of Heroes. After that, speech teams around the state will begin the speech state series. One student will represent each of the 14 events we compete in throughout the season.
This year I am the regional entry for Special Occasion Speaking or SOS. With regionals also comes Performance in the Round or PIR. Performance in the Round is a 15 minute performance that only competes during the state series. The regional tournament that OPRF will be competing in will be at Glenbrook North.
But before we compete in the regional tournament, we share our work through a public performance at OPRF. Not only do we perform for school administration, but we also perform for our friends, family and fellow team members. We get to show our parents what we’ve worked on and why they’ve been driving us to the high school at 5 a.m. on a Saturday.
This year, the speech team’s public performance happened on Tuesday, Jan. 27. As I’m a senior, this was my last time getting to watch all of these people speak. I joined the speech team as a freshman and have participated in the public performance every year. I could not be more grateful to watch all of these passionate, talented speakers and to have them watch me.
That’s what has made me come back to speech team year after year. The people. I will forever be grateful for the skills I learned through speech team. But even more so I am grateful for the connections I’ve made.
