T-R PHOTO BY ROBERT MAHARRY From left to right, East Marshall Speech Coach Jodi Ash, junior Maddux Bennett, and sophomores Cooper Hooley and Addi Cole are headed to the individual All-State Speech Festival on the UNI Campus in Cedar Falls on Monday.

LE GRAND — The Iowa High School Speech Association’s annual individual All-State Festival on the UNI campus in Cedar Falls highlights the best of the best in a wide variety of categories, and this year, three East Marshall students — juniors Maddux Bennett in storytelling and sophomores Cooper Hooley and Addi Cole in prose — are among that elite group.

All three are first-time all-state honorees, and Bennett and Hooley will perform their pieces while Cole is in the non-performing category. Hooley’s story, titled “Richard,” is about a three-year-old who breaks into his neighbor Richard’s house after becoming obsessed with him and spying on him.

“It was kind of just funny. I liked it. It made me giggle when I read it the first time,” he said.

Bennett’s story is “There’s a Man in the Woods” by Jacob Streilein, which he chose because most of the others in the storytelling category were happy and upbeat, and he wanted to do something different. It’s about a teacher who goes crazy because a student makes up a lie about a man being in the woods, which is accepted by everyone else around him and results in his firing before the former teacher eventually becomes the man in the woods.

“That’s part of why I think it went so well for me and why I love it so much. It’s because I was able to obsess over it and I was able to fully act like the teacher going crazy, and it was amazing to see how uncomfortable the judges got,” he said.

Cole’s piece, “Spiders Are Scary” by Allie Brosh, is about a woman with arachnophobia.

“I just thought it’s a good piece, and it suits my talents as an actor,” she said. “I’ve been told I have really good comedic timing, which this piece utilizes a lot.”

East Marshall Speech Coach Jodi Ash is proud of all three of her honorees, specifically shouting out Cole for being the second performer of the day in her category at the State competition and still receiving All-State recognition as well as Bennett for attending All-State last year as a spectator and committing to making it in the future.

“I think the reason they made it is (that) they had fun with their piece, and they made it impossible to ignore so that everybody in the room’s having fun. And so it’s wonderful to watch somebody love their piece, and not everybody does,” Ash said. “It’s really cool to watch people get passionate about their piece and work hard to achieve a goal. So that’s been really cool to watch.”

And they’re proud of themselves as well.

“I feel really good about it because it’s just kind of an accumulation of the past two years leading up to this being like ‘Hey, I did it.’ And I’m very happy,” Hooley said.

Bennett commented that this year felt like a breakthrough after struggling in his first year of large group speech and initially only recording a radio broadcasting segment for individual.

“I just think it’s amazing that I’ve come so far that now I’m fine with doing a piece where I’m acting like a crazy person in front of everyone, and I think it’s just such an honor to get to be able to perform at UNI,” he said.

Bennett will perform during the 10 to 11:15 a.m. block at the Gallagher Bluedorn Performing Arts Center, and Hooley will be in the Maucker Union during the 1:30 p.m. block.

Other area performers include Jaylin Fogarty (After Dinner Speaking) and Nolan Sawtelle (Radio News Announcing) from Marshalltown High School, Edith Mora Martinez from South Tama County in Literary Program and Isa Allen of North Tama in Storytelling. To learn more, visit https://www.ihssa.org/.