Mounds Park Academy Senior Steps Into Elite Company With 4th Speech Medal

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Movie stars, policy makers, leading thinkers, and world leaders -- many of them participated in speech when they were in high school.

The Minnesota state speech tournament is this weekend, with Class A Friday and Double-A Saturday. And it just so happens one of the best competitors this state has ever seen is participating this year.

"My specific piece is by Jennifer Thompson-Cannino and Ronald Cotton. It's about a 22-year-old who was sexually assaulted in her college apartment," Allison Leopold said. "It was in 1984. They didn't have modern DNA technology, so her eyewitness testimony was basically everything. And she ended up accusing the wrong man."

Leopold is a senior at Mounds Park Academy in St. Paul.

"I've always loved acting and performing, and speech is another way to do that," she said.

Leopold's category is Serious Interpretation of Prose, which adapts a book into a 10-minute speech performance. She's won a medal each of the last three years.

Those 10 minutes are the culmination of hours upon hours of preparation and practice over the last several months.

"We'll run scenes, we'll run difficult parts, we'll run the whole thing -- time it," she said. "We'll just work on really developing the character."

This year, Leopold won her fourth medal, putting her into elite company. Before Friday, only 50 students in state history had done that. Now, she's number 51.