A social media post last month about our speech team at state prompted this memory from Jill Setzer ‘88:

My friend Kara Foster & I begged to have a speech team back in ‘87. Dorothy (Brady), our theatre teacher, was willing to be our sponsor.

So, off to the Debate competition in our second semester and Kara and I wanted to hide under a table the entire first day. None of us knew what we’re doing. All of the other competitors from other schools came in with banker boxes full of info etc.

That night, I went to Osco and purchased 2 banker boxes & a TON of candy. I loaded the candy and some sodas into box #1. I then gathered a boatload of books and loaded them into box #2.

We showed up the next day looking as if we had done months of research. Still had it handed to us, but by goodness, we arrived in style.

I’m soooooo happy to see that the speech team has evolved into a great program!

We reached out to Kara Foster ‘88, and she replied with her own memories:

There we were pencils in hand, poised for battle. Our index card box containing our researched facts, and our paper folded note chart by our sides. We were ready for this. We had spent all semester carefully creating speeches about the topic “Resolved, that the federal government should implement a comprehensive long term agricultural farm policy”. We knew that if we had to support the for or against, our arguments were well supported, well written speeches. We felt ready to refute the statements made by the other teams.

Then came the big moment. The Creighton Prep team started to talk. I am not sure which dropped further, my pencil or my jaw. The speed of the words coming out were mind boggling. Sure, I had noticed that all the other teams walking onto UNL campus for the State Tournament were pulling luggage carts; but until that moment I didn’t know why. The speed debates we witnessed the next two days well – let’s just say we weren’t in Kansas anymore. The next day, Jill showed up with two black lidded, white and red boxes and I was befuddled. When she opened one up I saw sour cherry balls, Funyuns and other food and cracked up laughing. Our index cards had a new home.

We may have muddled our way through that debate tournament, but we made great memories and had a lot of laughs. We did encounter one group as green as ourselves and managed to come away with one win.

I have no idea of my “why” – but I did always love speech class. I was involved in music and theatre and when the brand new classes “Debate” and “Adv. Debate” were added to the schedule – heck, let’s go!

Jill added these details and a few life-long lessons learned:

I talked Kara into the insane idea of starting a speech and debate team at Pius our last year. Although we had our hindsides handed to us it definitely taught me a few lessons:

1. Fake it ’till you make it;
2. There are lessons to be learned in losing;
3. be “prepared;’ and
4. think on your feet.

That experience definitely prepared me for practicing law in a courtroom.