Hendrickson will try her luck in Las Vegas at National speech contest

By SARAH DULINSKY, S-T Staff Writer

Las Vegas: A place of fun, entertainment and this year a place to hold the National Forensic League’s National Contest held June 15-21. Jenny Hendrickson, Clarke Community High School's NFL president, qualified to go nationals for her dramatic interpretation of "Do They Wear High Heels in Heaven?" Hendrickson pulled the speech from a book about a journalist doing a light-hearted story on getting a mammogram and finds out she has breast cancer. "I found the book online," Hendrickson said. "A fellow competitor saw the speech performed a few years ago and thought that I would do a good job performing it also." Hendrickson cut the 200 page novel down into a ten minute speech. "It took me about two weeks to cut the book down and about three weeks to memorize it." Hendrickson favors dramatic interpretation because it is a deeper development into one character. It can have different characters but they usually have a couple lines. "I like how the book contrasts," Hendrickson said. "It is funny at the beginning but serious at the end. Most of the judges like that because a lot of dramatic interpretations are about death and dying, but this one is different." There are two different districts in Iowa, east district and west district. In order to qualify for National's a speech contestant must be a member of the NFL and place first or second at their district. Clarke is in the East District. The national contest draws 4,000 to 5,000 extra people to the selected city for the week. There are 200 to 350 participants in each category for the first six rounds. After that they are cut down to about 60 per category. After this cut, the participants are cut in half every two rounds. At the February 8 and 9 East Iowa NFL District Iowa East's held in Iowa City, Clarke speech contestants competed against 14 different schools. Hendrickson's division was the largest with 25 participants. Donal May, Clarke Community High School's speech and drama teacher, as well as the other speech contest members, were in shock when Hendrickson’s name was called at second place at the EINFL. "I am a member of the East Iowa Committee for speech contests so I am one out of two people who get to announce the places at the EINFL District EI's," May said. "When the second place contestant was called everyone from Clarke went crazy. Being a member of this committee, I was especially emotional because I got to present Jenny with her plaque." Since Hendrickson's speech is about breast cancer, May thought this year they would tie their Indian Investment in with a donation to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. The Indian Investment is a fundraiser the speech team does to raise money to help support their events for the rest of the year and into next year. "We raise money every year anyway but this way we can connect the two and do a double duty," May said. The speech team started raising money around February 19 and will end March 18. They hope to make enough money from local business donations and personal contributions to make a sizeable donation to the Breast Cancer Foundation. If anyone would like to make a donation, please contact Donal May at 641-342-6505, Ext. 520.