SPEECH LEAGUE TOURNAMENT 9 Valley speakers win top honors

Boardman, Austintown Fitch and Cardinal Mooney high schools had students take first place.
BOARDMAN -- Nine Mahoning Valley students took first-place honors in the 75th Ohio High School Speech League State Tournament.
Boardman High School finished best out of the Youngstown district, taking second place in the tournament, which was Friday and Saturday at Wooster High School and featured 140 schools.
Boardman, which finished third in last year's tournament, has finished in the top 10 every year since 1993.
The Youngstown district includes schools from Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties.
From this district, Howland High School finished fifth, Austintown Fitch finished sixth and Cardinal Mooney took ninth.
"Youngstown usually has four or five schools in the top 10, as we did this year," said Eric Simione, Boardman speech coach.
Boardman had five students place in the top 10 in individual programs and had a two-man team place as well.
State qualifier: Junior Ashley Senary took first in the original oratory program, where students write their own one-minute speech on any subject. Senary qualified for the state finals the last two years.
"Mine's on love this year," Senary said. "I just kind of make fun of myself."
Individual winners were awarded a plaque. Their schools received matching plaques.
And although local students did well this year, John Mazzucco, Fitch's team coach, said the rest of the state is catching up in competition.
"We dominated things for a decade and there's pretty much parity across the state now," he said.
Fitch had three students and one two-man team reach the final round of competition.
Ryan Clausen, a Fitch senior, took first place in the humor division, where students give a 10-minute speech on any subject. He is a three-time national qualifier and a four-time state qualifier.
Clausen said his speech included voice impersonations of actors such as Jim Carrey and the late Chris Farley.
"My dad has always done voices, so I took after him," he said.
Cardinal Mooney students took first in two divisions.
Katura Lockett took first in prose/poetry and the team of Diane Pisani and Sean Philibin took first in the duo interpretation section.
Lockett took third in the same category in last year's state finals. Pisani took fourth in the state last year and Philibin was a quarter finalist.
Diane Mastro Nard, coach of Cardinal Mooney's team, said her students will return with even better success next year.
Teamwork: A team of West Branch High School students, Nathan Dana, Stephon Harris, Steve Fannin and Jason Ramsey, took first in the four-person debate category. The team took second in the same category last year.
West Branch coach Tracey Hinkle said the team made a pact last year to win it all this time around and went 11-0 in the 2002 tournament.
Howland also had four students place in the tournament.