Winter storm forces schools to delay, postpone IHSSA district contests

The winter storm is forcing schools across the state to delay or postpone speech and drama competitions.

The first round of Iowa High School Speech Association large group contests was supposed to kick off Saturday with what's called Districts. Twenty-six thousand students in the state compete at 16 district sites, which are held at schools.

The students compete in 11 different categories, including musical theatre, group mime, radio broadcasting and reader's theatre.

Hosting a District contest takes a lot of preparation and work. Cascade Contest Manager Angie Manternach said, "it’s hours of work that starts back in October with recruiting your judges, your volunteers, setting up anything that you can in advance, arranging your food people."

Manternach initially delayed the 8 a.m. contest start to 11 a.m. Ultimately, Western Dubuque Superintendent Rick Colpitts made the decision to postpone. Now, the contest will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 23rd.

While it'll be safer for everyone involved, Cascade speech coach Hailey Manternach said, "I think it makes it a little disastrous, not only for us but for other schools."

Angie Manternach had already begun to set up the school for Saturday's contest around noon on Friday.

"As you can see, in my room, I already blacked out my windows because I'm a short film center," she explained. "Other rooms we had to take like futons out of rooms and move in extra seating or take tables out of to create extra seating. That had already been done in about three or four centers."

"Instead of setting up, we're now returning rooms back to order," Angie Manternach said.

Now she'll spend the weekend rescheduling and finding new volunteers and judges.

"I'm not going to have about half my judges that I was going to have for Saturday, so now I have to find new judges too," Angie Manternach said.

"If you would like to volunteer on Wednesday go ahead and give us a call," Hailey Manternach said.

The phone number for Cascade High School is (563) 852-3201.

All 16 district sites have either delayed or postponed contest. For a full list, visit the