A pair of Okotoks students will soon be competing on an international level.

Bolu Kasumu and Alia Nanji of Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School (STS) have qualified for the World Individual Debating and Public Speaking Championships.

Though several STS students have competed in the competition before, this is the first time two have done so in the same year.

Both joined the school's speech club in grade seven, and have now been competing for several years.

Nanji qualified for Worlds at the International Independent Schools Public Speaking Competition, competing in the Dramatic Interpretation, Radio Broadcast, and Persuasive Speaking categories.

Two of those categories saw her submitting video files and performing for Radio Broadcast live.

Kasumu competed in the Canadian National Public Speaking Championship, competing in the Impromptu, Debate, Persuasive Speaking, and Interpretive Reading categories, landing him his first spot in an international competition.

The competition in April is to be hosted in Ontario, though the Okotoks pair will be competing over Zoom.

It's something both students are used to at this point, with Zoom having become the norm for public speaking competitions during the pandemic.

"It's hard to get into the mindset of public speaking, for me, if I don't have a live audience. Typically when I'm performing of speaking in front of a live audience I can feel the anticipation, I know everyone's eyes are on me, whereas on Zoom, stranding in front of a computer, no one else around me, I actually found it a little easier to my computer but there are differences for sure. It's hard to actually connect with your audience, which is difficult. You can't really make eye contact with them, make sure you're drawing them in with your facial expressions."

For Kasumu, the downside of competing virtually is the stifled social aspect.

"When we would do speech competitions, a big part of it was getting to interact with the kids from other schools and coaching each other, seeing what the other kids were like and just having fun with them, just like basketball teams when you're playing a sport, you can have fun with other teams and engage with people. When we're doing competitions online over Zoom, we don't really get that face-to-face interaction, so I've definitely been missing that."

Their instructor Lennard Fink says both students are immensely talented and have demonstrated their capacity to compete many times over.

"They're both very coachable, so when they're reading a passage, for example, and they haven't quite understood the tone and how the tone could change, then you review that with them, you go over it with them and read it so that they can hear it and then they try to implement what I have suggested.

"It's really a true coaching experience and, as I said, they're very coachable and through lots of experience through the Calgary competitions with Alberta Debate and Speech, they gain the skills necessary, and we have a really strong speech program in Calgary so they've been up against some really strong competition long before these tournaments. Without that kind of experience, they could never be at this level."

When it comes to the big event, both seem well prepared.

Nanji is zeroing in ahead of her strengths and weaknesses ahead of the competition.

"I am a little nervous. There are a few categories that I'm really comfortable with and excited to compete in. I have to compete in interpretive reading, so that's just picking a piece of prose and performing that, so I'm fine with that. I'm pretty confident in my persuasive speech, I was happy with how I did with that at internationals. Impromptu speaking is the other one I have to compete at, which I did not do at internationals, but I do find it's not the hardest for me. I'll definitely put in some work for that before we compete. The last one at Worlds is debate, which is something I definitely need to work on."

For Kasumu, the fact that he's even come this far is a point of pride.

"I'm just really proud of what I've been able to do because I just never saw myself as somebody who could get to this level in speech. Speech used to be something that terrified me, something that made me really nervous, and something I didn't want to do, but now it's something I look forward to and I look for opportunities to get to speak in front of a crowd, it's something that excites me."

That initial reluctance is something Fink remembers well for both students.

"When Alia began in grade seven, as she will attest, she didn't want to do anything other than something she was very comfortable at, but I kept repeating that in order to get to a different level, a national level, whether in middle school or senior school, they really had to broaden their perspective and enter more categories and try different events within public speaking. They both, not easily but they both recognized the need to do so, and as a result, gained further confidence and experience.

"Bolu, for example, did not want to do impromptu speaking and I insisted, 'you are doing impromptu speaking,' and his dad supported that idea, and he was a bit reluctant at the beginning in the practices but he was open to it and developed the necessary skills, and the first competition he went to, he won, so it helped, I think, recognize the need to expand beyond just what you're comfortable with."