It is said that a new program or a new coach needs five years to establish that program and get it up and going.

That has certainly not been the case with the Hennessey High School speech and debate team, which was started in 2015 by HHS English teacher and forensics coach Linda Soudek.

Since then, Soudek and the HHS teams have earned three consecutive state academic championships in speech and debate in 2017, 2018, and 2019; a fourth place class 3A team sweepstakes finish in 2019; countless regular-season tournament championships, four team regional runner-up finishes, one team third-place regional finish, 12 individual regional championships, 10 individual regional runner-up finishes, two individual state championships in domestic extemporaneous speaking in 2015 and original oratory in 2017; state consolation champion in Lincoln-Douglas debate in 2016; numerous individual state finalists and state debate quarterfinalists; and class 3A state cross-examination debate runners-up  in 2019.

For all the achievements the teams have enjoyed the past few years since beginning in 2015, there has been no team more successful than this year’s 2018-19 HHS speech team.

With a cumulative GPA of 3.97, the nine team members of senior Dakota Davis, juniors Nadia Valles, Pedro Valle, and Claire Ullery, and freshmen Emma Venable, Grace Curran, Jaden Matthews, Milisa Heskett and Ashland Crites easily brought home the class 3A academic state championship for the third consecutive year, a feat unmatched by any other team.

At the state tournament, the cross-ex debate team of Davis and Valles went undefeated in preliminary rounds en route to being the state runners-up for 2019.

Davis was also a state finalist in monologue.

Valles also placed fourth in the state in class 3A foreign extemporaneous speaking and was a state finalist in original oratory.

The cross-ex debate team of Heskett and Crites were state quarterfinalists as well.

In addition, Ullery competed in Lincoln-Douglas debate and narrowly missed breaking to quarterfinal rounds.

Davis, Heskett and Crites also competed in domestic extemporaneous speaking.

This all added up to a fourth place team sweepstakes finish in class 3A, the first-ever state team sweepstakes award for HHS.