Blondie and Billy Joel were at the top of the charts when “The Streak” began, and most kids listened to those superstars on their Sony Walkman, paid $1.12 for a gallon of gas, and loved the “Dukes of Hazzard” on their Friday nights.
If, of course, they weren’t hanging out at Rax that night.
That was back in 1980, though, when Ronald Reagan was the new American President, video arcades became popular destinations among teenagers, and the speech and debate team at Wheeling Park High won its very first state title.
And they haven’t lost the state competition since, and this year, coaches Jennifer Mathieu, Kayla Nelson, and Isabella Droginske guided this year’s team to its 46th consecutive W.Va. championship.
“There definitely was pressure because of the streak, but I think, honestly, most of it is pressure we place on ourselves,” said senior Will Medovic. “We hold ourselves to that higher standard because of the history of our program, and we’re very hard on ourselves. That’s what it comes down to, honestly.
“We work very hard, and we help each other all of the time. We have practices, we rehearse in front of the mirrors at home, and we ask each other for advice all of the time,” he said. “We absolutely know about streak, and that’s something we want to continue. I know that’s been one of my goals since my first year on the team, and the best way to do that is to be the best we can be.”
Senior Anna Contraguerro knew she wanted to be a speech and debate team member before she could become a speech and debate team member.
“I heard about the streak of state championships and about the pressure, and I knew I wanted to be a member. I wanted to be part of that greatness at Wheeling Park,” she said matter-of-factly. “The streak and that pressure just helped motivate me to get better all of the time, and I won the Prose Category this year, and that’s because of the work I put in with my team, coaches, and with my mom.
“We were all determined to keep it going,” Anna said. “I’m sure that’s been the case for every single member of this team for a lot of years, and it’s going to be that for a long time to come.”
And senior Levi Powell knows why.
“Once you get a win, you know you can get a win,” he explained. “That’s when you know you can do it. That’s when some of the pressure goes away, but you still hold yourself to that higher standard because you’ve proven to yourself that you can be the best. That’s very important when you are competing in these events.
“Even when you finish second, you still know you deserve to be there and that a first place isn’t far away. It motivates you big time,” said Levi, the state champ in Program of Oral Interpreting. “Now that the seniors on the team have been through so many competitions, we’re able to help our younger members prepare just like we got help from the members who came before us.”
Practice Makes Perfect
This is the part no one reports on or discusses much, and that’s because it’s not shiny like the trophies, and the spotlight is dark when the hard work and tough love take center stage.
But it’s the preparation that makes the most difference.
“Our practices have always been a couple of hours after school for most of the school year,” Medovic explained. “We all kind of go off in our separate ways to work on our presentations, but we also have a schedule of who’s going to watch who. And when you’re not on someone’s schedule for your piece to be watched by someone, you always find other people going around and helping each other.
“We’re always asking each other if we can help because we all have our own ideas,” he said. “And we’re all open to it because it’s part of our process to improve, and we make sure our younger members learn that fact as soon as possible.”
The practice didn’t end inside the high school’s walls, however.
“So, we only have three coaches, so a lot of it comes down to helping each other,” Powell explained. “That happens when we get together on our own time, and when we’re at practice. The team’s leaders are always helping our younger members because that’s how we learned when we were freshmen and sophomores.
“Our families help us a great deal, too,” the senior said. “My family watches my pieces, and there are also a lot of times where we’ll talk in front of walls. There’s actually a running joke that we talk to walls all the time, but that’s just us getting better and better. We talk in the mirror, we film ourselves, we listen to ourselves back. It’s just a bunch of back and forth of over and over, talking to yourself, listening to yourself, always talking and talking.”
Contraguerro works at home, too, and for very good reason.
“My mom’s very, very, very supportive of my speeches at home,” Anna said. “What she’s done for me has been very, very valuable because she is a speech and debate judge. That means that she goes to the tournaments, she watches the rounds, and she chooses the ranks. So, she provides feedback.
“She’s very much ‘in the know’ about all of the speech events,” she said. “She’s ‘in the know’ about what places in the events, so, having that resource at home is extremely, extremely helpful.”
The Record Books
According to the school’s Speech & Debate Facebook page, Wheeling Park’s championship team earned the following:
10 Individual State Champions: Will Medovic, Overall Top Speaker, 1st place Informative Speaking, 2nd place Prose Interpretation; 2nd place Duo Interpretation; Briele Dobson, 1st place Declamation; 1st place Oral Interpretation of Literature; Levi Powell, 1st place Programme Oral Interpretation; 2nd place Original Oratory; Anna Contraguerro, 1st place Prose Interpretation; 3rd place Informative Speaking; McKenna Guthoerl, 1st place Poetry Interpretation; 4th place Humorous/ Dramatic Interpretation; Jerome Maynard, 1st place Humorous/ Dramatic Interpretation; Jana Schodzinski, 1st place Impromptu Speaking; 2nd place Extemporaneous Speaking; 2nd place Congressional Debate; Lilly Smith, 1st place Duo Interpretation; 4th place Declamation; and Ireland Witchey, 1st place Duo Interpretation
Several more team members contributed to the historic victory, including:
Isabella AlKhouri, 3rd place Prose Interpretation; Blair Anderson, 2nd place Declamation; 4th place Extemporaneous Speaking; Jules Burke, 4th place Public Forum Debate; Gabrielle Contraguerro, 3rd place Oral Interpretation of Literature, 2nd place Programme Oral Interpretation; Amiah Fuentes, 2nd place Poetry Interpretation; Josephine Gilbert, 3rd place Congressional Debate; 3rd place Public Forum Debate; Cash Givens, 6th place Humorous/ Dramatic Interpretation; 3rd place Extemporaneous Speaking; Miriam Halicki, 5th place Lincoln-Douglas Debate; Paige Jones, 4th place Public Forum Debate; Audrey Kenamond, 4th place Duo Interpretation; Siyan Lopez, 5th place Humorous/ Dramatic Interpretation; 3rd place Poetry Interpretation; Claire McFadden,2nd place Duo Interpretation; Gianna Mills, 4th place Broadcasting; 4th place Duo Interpretation; Flannery Muscar, 2nd place Oral Interpretation of Literature; 3rd place Humorous/ Dramatic Interpretation; Ava Norman, 6th place Impromptu Speaking; 2nd place Broadcasting; Khadija Rizwan, 4th place Original Oratory; Emma Seibert, 5th place Impromptu Speaking; Joeyana Strothers, 4th place Informative Speaking; 5th place Poetry Interpretation; Nathan Tyska, 4th place Lincoln-Douglas Debate; Ella Wheeler, 3rd place Public Forum Debate; Bridget Zoeckler, 6th place Congressional Debate; and Liam Curtin, 6th place Spontaneous Debate.
Team members Leah Cole, Clara Demasi, Maria Faulstick, Taylor Miller, and Mojolaoluwa Oluwadare also filled vital roles during the school year.
In mid-April, Anna, Levi, Will, and McKenna Guthoerl traveled to a national tournament at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, and each of them brought home some hardware. Anna was a semi-finalist in Oral Interp, Will was 6th Place in Oral Interp, McKenna finished in second place in Oral Interp, and Levi finished in second place in Original Oratory.
Next up is the National Speech & Debate Tournament on June 14-19 in Richmond. Va.
“We did do national qualifiers for that event, and a lot of our team is going,” Powell said. “That’s such a massive deal to us because we watched videos from NSDA, and we use all of those people as examples. To know that we’re a team that’s going to get to go compete is amazing.
“Of course, there are a lot of individual competitions, but we help each other all of the time,” the state champ explained. “There will be thousands of students from schools from throughout the country, so we’re all very excited.”
The qualifying team members are attempting to raise funds with a number of posts on their Facebook page, and Coach Mathieu explained how important support has been for Wheeling Park’s speech and debate students since the streak began.
“Wheeling Park’s speech and debate team could not keep this streak going for 46 years without all of the support that we have had this year and, in the past,” Mathieu insisted. “Of course, all of the alumni that are reaching out to encourage us, and we know this community supports, too, and the Board of Education is always welcoming and congratulatory to us and supporting us.
“And I also want to thank my other two coaches, Miss Isabella Droginski and Mrs. Kayla Nelson,” she said. “Without them, this all would have been very, very difficult so, thankfully, they were as dedicated to this team as anyone.”
