Eight are great!

For the third year in a row, the Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa speech team claimed the Section 5A runner-up trophy.

At Annandale for sections on April 9, B-B-E's team brought 10 speech students to compete for a berth in the Class 1A state meet. Out of those 10, eight will advance to the big show, which is April 15 at Lakeview North high school.

Taking the first-place team trophy was Eden Valley-Watkins, who had over 40 entries at the section meet. In third place was perennial speech power house St. Cloud Cathedral, who lost out the race for second to B-B-E on a tiebreaker. According to head coach Lucy Lloyd, B-B-E took first place in more events than Cathedral.

In fact, both B-B-E and section champion EV-W had the same number of individual event champions (three each). In the team scores, EV-W had 39 points, while B-B-E had 31.

Taking fifth place was Minnewaska Area.

STATE BOUND from B-B-E!

1st place, Section Champions

Isaiah Mitchell, Drama

Nick Steinhofer, Ex Speaking

Austin Meyer, Prose

Molly Tengwall, Storytelling

2nd place

Joe Reller/Riley Schumann, Duo

Isaac Vliem, Ex Speaking

3rd place

Alyssa Dalen, Original Oratory

Also competing at sections and contributing to the team's score were freshmen Aspen Peterson and senior Andrew Reps.

Read more coverage of the B-B-E speech team in next week's Bonanza Valley Voice newspaper.