As Andrew Errington watches his short film for speech, “Zapitrilivacitalum,” he makes sure that it’s absolutely perfect. Meticulously checking every small detail, he makes quick work of it so the rest of his team can revise the errors in his work.

When Errington was a freshman in high school, his brother Will (MVHS ‘24) suggested that he should try out for Large Group Speech. “He described it to a point where it sounded fun,”  Errington said.

Following his brother’s advice to join Speech, Errington was walking to the auditions after football practice, and the drawstring on his pants fell out. This is how  he had the idea to have his audition to be “how to get a drawstring back into a pair of pants.” The speech coach said, “You don’t even know how perfect that was.” After he said that, Errington was glad that he didn’t think of something elaborate to make his audition, and was really excited to join speech because of that interaction.

As the days went by, Errington wondered what speech groups he would be in. He ended up in TV news and Short Film, and both groups were directed by students Emmett Jordan, Megan Teague, and Grant Tucker. Emmet Jordan (MVHS 25), the director of the short film, wanted to discuss ideas for what they wanted to do. They decided they wanted to make a documentary of a medicine advertisement, which brought the idea of “Zapitrilavaxitalum.”

On one random Monday, they got together to make this short film a reality, and when they did, they spent roughly four hours getting “Zapitrilavaxitalum” ready and perfect. The rest of the time before the first-ever competition, he would be lifting weights and “firing up the ol’ Xbox.” When the first speech competition came around, they got on the bus with their computer and video ready.

When awaiting his events, he would be sitting in the gym talking with friends, eating all of the food that was at the concession stand. One of his favorite memories was “ going through the Kanye West tweet with Everett.” That tweet was mostly about his hatred of Jews.

 When his event was almost up, they opened up the computer and made sure everything was ready to be shown to the judges. “There is a weird scoring system,” Errington said. “A one is like the best you can get and would help you advance, while if you get a two, it was just okay.” There were threes and fours, but if someone curses at a judge or says something foul towards someone.

In their first competition, they received straight ones from all the judges, and the same thing happened at state.  They were then invited to compete at All-State, which is an incredible honor for anyone, especially a freshman. Errington ended up with a medal that had been in his backpack for a month, and at the end of the year, he took everything out but couldn’t find it anywhere.