NE Florida News

Congreso, the Florida State Spanish Conference, took place from March 9-11 in Orlando, Florida. The Bolles team of 16 upper school students joined students from all over the state to compete in competitions such as impromptu, play and poem.

The competitions began Thursday night, when students participated in impromptu speaking. Given one of 16 topics, students had two minutes to create a two-minute speech for the judges. Next, students participated in either the play or poem competitions on Friday. The Bolles team’s play, “Sempronio,” featured themes of love and courage with plenty of comedy. The poems, on the other hand, were all individually practiced and performed by students. To get fully into character, students dressed up characters from princesses all the way to pirates.

After all the competitions, the Friday night banquet occurred and was followed by a dance. At the banquet, clothing, dances, songs and musical instruments from Spanish-speaking countries were highlighted. Finally, the awards ceremony was Saturday morning, and Bolles won first place in the state competition.  

One student who participated, Amber Bansal ’24, reflected on her experience at Congreso:

“This is my second year participating in the competition, and I can’t wait to do it again! Congreso is an amazing avenue to practice our Spanish skills outside the classroom and meet so many others while doing it. My competitions included impromptu speaking and a poem. Impromptu is always the scariest, but it’s a great way to gain confidence with Spanish. My poem was “A Margarita DeBayle” by Ruben Dario. It is about a princess who stole a star out of the sky, so, of course, to get into character I dressed as a princess. Overall, the experience was amazing and the fact that we won is a testament to everyone’s preparation and dedication. It was also so nice to see a lot of the younger members of our team become more comfortable with Spanish as the competition went on. We would all like to thank Sra. Stam and Sra. Smith for being there the whole way and for all the work they put into the competition! I would highly recommend that other Spanish students consider participating in Congreso!”

The following Bolles students competed at Congreso:

*Earned Sobresaliente award (the highest award)

^Earned a Perfect score

Level II:

Ethan Bathala: Poem *^, Impromptu*^

Alexa Clutter: Poem *^, Impromptu*^

Sameera Ghate: Play *^, Impromptu*^

Jonah Landis: Play *^, Impromptu*

Level III:

Rohan Deshmukh: Play *^, Impromptu*^

Christina Dovellos: Play *^, Impromptu*^

Soumya Kondu: Play *^, Impromptu*^

Dhruv Pandya: Impromptu*^

Amanda Tun: Play *^, Impromptu*^

Level IV:

Cole Breuer: Play *^, Impromptu

Victoria Edgar:  Poem, Impromptu*^

Eesh Majithia: Poem *^, Play *^, Impromptu*^

Unsh Majithia: Poem *^, Impromptu*

Eli Stevenson: Play *^, Impromptu

Level V:

Amber Bansal: Poem*, Impromptu*^

Kelly Donovan: Play *^, Impromptu*

Original source can be found here.