Rebecca Picone, an eighth grade student at St. Joseph School in Shelton, won the first prize at the Modern Woodmen of America Regional Speech Contest.
The contest was held at St. Rose of Lima School in Newtown, CT. This was after Rebecca also came in first place at the SJ school competition.
Each year St. Joseph and other local schools participate in a speech contest sponsored by Modern Woodmen of America.
This year’s topic was “the importance of healthy living” which encompassed many different facets students could have chosen. Some of the different variants of the topic students could have chosen included exercise, nutrition, obesity, disease prevention, or mental health.
Rebecca’s speech was an inspirational and uplifting one — talking about being happy as the main element in leading a healthy life. Each speech must be between three and five minutes long and students are penalized for speeches outside of that time frame.
Rebecca took home the first place trophy, a first for St. Joseph School.
She will be moving on to the national speech contest at a location to be determined.