On Saturday, Nov. 9, Krystle Nelson (11), along with nine other members of the Lincoln Southeast Speech team, participated in the Papillion-LaVista South Monarch Royal Invitational in Papillion, Nebraska. This was the fourth tournament the Southeast Speech team has participated in so far this year. It was at this tournament, where Nelson participated in the finals round of Novice Dramatic Tournament for the first time, and was announced champion at the awards ceremony later that night. 

As a novice (student who is participating in Speech for the first time), Nelson competed against other novices and was given first place in all three preliminary rounds and in the finals round. 

However, this tournament was separated between novice and varsity members (students who have previous experience in speech). As the speech season progresses, the novice and varsity members will compete against each other during the tournament. Nelson believes that this will overall change the way she competes in rounds in order to progress to the finals round. 

“There’s going to be more experienced performers, [but] it’s going to be a good experience and hopefully push me [to give] a better performance,” Nelson said. 

Nelson participates in one of the 11 events a student can perform during the speech season. Dramatic Interpretation, also known as Serious Prose, is an event where a student performs a script of their choice, but it must be dramatic. Nelson chose “Multiple Personality Murder,” by Deborah Karczewski, for the 2019-2020 season. 

This script is the story of Pat, a prisoner who suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, also known as Multiple Personality Disorder. Throughout the piece, Pat switches between herself and her two alternate personalities, Leisha and Kaylee. The audience begins to discover why she is in prison, and her history as to why she did what she did. 

Nelson hopes to continue to achieve her goals of being a finalist at competitions, and possibly making districts at the end of the Speech season in March. However, her biggest goal is to simply do the very best that she can. 

“[I hope to] continue going to tournaments and just competing and gaining more of an understanding of [speech],” Nelson said.