The Pella and Pella Christian speech teams are once again sending a large group of students to the Iowa High School Speech Association state contest.

For Pella Community Schools, 18 of the 23 entries that performed at district Friday are advancing to the next round, meaning all of those acts earned the highest possible score of a I rating. In total four musical theater teams, three ensemble acting groups, three improv teams, two from readers theatre, two short films, and a one act play, radio broadcast, solo mime, and TV news group are all advancing. Pella has three groups of 9th grade teams advancing among those performers as well. Pella Christian is advancing 7 of their 8 performances to the state round as well. The seven events advancing include: One Act “Radium Girls”, Readers Theatre “Mirrors”, Choral Readers “Tell Tale Heart”, Musical Theatre “West Side Story”, Musical Theatre “Mamma Mia”, Short Film, and Improv. Students from both schools will perform next this Saturday at Cedar Rapids Kennedy High School.

PCM had five entries perform at district large group speech contest at Pella High school on Saturday. They were:

Group Improvisation—Team Maddy: Division II raring
Group Improvisation—Team Carson: Division I rating
Choral Reading—Division II rating
Group Improvisation—Team Brenden: Division II rating
Readers Theatre—Division I rating

Team Carson improv and Readers Theatre will perform at the state contest.

Knoxville’s lone performance in improv received a Division II rating, which will not advance to state.

Results from other area schools performing at Pella High School Saturday morning for PCM and Melcher-Dallas were not immediately available.