on the board, but the Conduct of Meetings results seemed to take forever. Finally after nearly two hours the judges came out and put the results up on the board. We placed second Gold and we advanced to Districts. We were overjoyed, but we knew that our ultimate goal was to make state so we kept on practicing. Districts was only a couple weeks after Sub-Districts and before we knew it we found ourselves in the holding room again. We knew that it was going to be tougher this time. The competition would be even more difficult and the judges would expect more from us, but we didn’t let that make us nervous. Again we simply stayed calm in the holding room and just had fun. We weren’t last this time so we only had to wait for only an hour or so and when we performed we did well again. This time we had to wait even longer to find out, but finally we were sitting in the auditorium waiting for the slideshow to start and tell us the results. The slides were in alphabetical order so we didn’t have to wait long. When the Conduct of Meetings results started they started at the bottom with the eight-place team and worked themselves up to the top. Team by team was eliminated and with each place passed we sighed a sigh of release. Our team was finally called for second place; we had advanced to state.
We had reached our goal to reach state, but we wanted more and that became even more apparent when Wapsie Valley was announced as the winner and they started screaming and jumping around. No other school celebrates like that by yelling and screaming they all show respect, but not Wapsie Valley. Mr. Holthaus had warned us about Wapsie’s antics but seeing it first hand left us bitter and we wanted so bad to beat them at state and take home first place. So, we practiced even harder, we practiced on weekends, and memorized the rulebook. When it was time to leave for Des Moines we knew we were as ready as we would ever be. By this time we felt like we were pros at how to handle ourselves in the holding room and again we just had fun and when it was time for our performance we weren’t even troubled.
My group and I put together our best performance yet, but then came the questions that the judges ask. We confidently answered all the questions except for the last one. We gave it our best shot at answering the question, but we were unsure of it. The last question was so difficult even Mr. Holthaus couldn’t give an answer to it. We waited nearly four hours to find out the results and when they did announce them they only told us the top four, a top four that
Michael Serving His Chapter