Redwood Valley students Samyah Turner and Shai Palma went over their duo performance before the first round of competition at the Marshall High School Speech Spectacular. The speech tournament brought together a total of 280 students from 19 area teams on Saturday.

MARSHALL — The thought of giving a formal speech in front of an audience is stressful for a lot of people. But for the students bustling through the halls at Marshall High School this weekend, public speaking was more enjoyable than scary.

“It’s fun to do,” said Samyah Turner. Turner and Shai Palma, both eighth graders from Redwood Valley, were going over their scripts and movements before the start of the Marshall Speech Spectacular. The girls portrayed different characters as part of a duo.

A total of 280 students from 19 schools competed at the Marshall Speech Spectacular on Saturday. Speakers from several area teams, including Russell-Tyler-Ruthton, Marshall and Minneota, all did well at the tournament. RTR came in first place in the team sweepstakes. River Valley, a team made up of students from Springfield and Sleepy Eye, placed second. Windom Area High School placed third in the sweepstakes.

Students at the tournament said both performing and getting to spend time with teammates was part of the fun of being in speech. Marshall High School student Benjamin Pafko said he got interested in speech through other team members.

“A lot of my other friends were in speech,” Pafko said. In his first year in speech, Pafko was competing in Humorous Interpretation – a category where the goal is to make audiences laugh. “I like it,” Pafko said.

Palma said being able to work together with Turner was one of the best parts of being in the Duo category.

“I like that we get to hang out together a lot,” she said.

MHS student Hannah Hoefer said competing and helping out with the Speech Spectacular could have some stressful parts. One unusual thing for the Marshall speakers was that their team captains had traveled to a national speech tournament, and couldn’t be at this year’s Spectacular.

But Hoefer and teammate Natalie Brandl said there were also fun parts about competing in MHS’s hometown tournament.

“You get to see people from different schools,” Hoefer said.

Besides bringing in a different mix of teams and speakers, there were other positives to competing close to home. Friends and family had more of a chance to watch Marshall students speak, Brandl said.

“It’s enjoyable, the more people that can come watch you, that you know,” she said.