IGSA Festival of Speech
The IGSA Festival of Speech is an annual competition where girls from the IGSA schools across NSW and the ACT come together to compete and enjoy the spoken word in all its forms. It is a huge undertaking and the girls who represent the school dedicate hours in preparation time in the lead up to the Festival. This year was a “big” festival and went across Friday afternoon and evening and all day Saturday. The girls in the Debating teams dedicated both Friday after school and a large part of Saturday to competing and the rest of the girls attended on either Friday or Saturday.
This year’s team consisted of Gemma Shennan (Year 8) and Lila Eversgerd (Year 11) in the Reading Aloud sections, Jessica Gallie (Year 9) and Celia Watson (Year 11) in Public Speaking, Daisy Carson (Year 9) and Sadie Juneja (Year 10) in Speakers Soapbox, Perri Lawrence (Year 8) and Helaina Travassaros (Year 11) in Poetry in the individual sections.
The team events were Religious and Ethical Question; Pippa Brenner (Year 10), Leona Brenton (Year 10), Sophia Papadakis (Year 11), Current Affairs; Isabelle Rath-Mazzochi (Year 10), Zara Perkins (Year 10), Natalie Assaad (Year 10) and Drama; Camille McCarthy (Year 11), Claudia Parker (Year 11), Aurelia Cortese (Year 11), Verona Floro (Year 10) and Samantha Millin (Year 11). Finally our Debating teams included Yang Zhou (Year 9), Pascale Otton (Year 9), Holly Johnston (Year 9) and Caitlin Cameron (Year 9) in the Junior division and Georgia Tsangaris (Year 11), Gabrielle Cheung, (Year 11), Madeleine Soo (Year 11) and Katharine Conaglen (Year 11) in the Senior division.
The girls all worked hard and did SCEGGS proud. Both debating teams progressed to the third round, the Semi-Finals, unfortunately they were knocked out at that point but came in in 3rd place for the juniors and 4th place for the seniors. Helaina Travassaros came in 5th in Senior Poetry with a beautiful recitation of Mother Who Gave Me Life by Gwen Harwood. Sadie Juneja took our 4th place int Senior Soapbox with an impassioned speech on why we should stop sharing food and Celia Watson came in in 2nd place in Senior Public Speaking with a powerful speech on The Sound of Silence.
Thank you to the staff and coaches as well for supporting the girls and giving up your Saturday to make the day such a success.
Elizabeth Walsh
Speech and Public Speaking Co-ordinator
