By BRYNNE MCMURRAY
Moapa Valley Progress
Randie Shipp has been very busy throughout her four years of Moapa Valley High School. She was a part of the theater program and acted in the production of Ann of Green Gables in 2013. She has learned a lot in extracurricular activities such as ceramics. But her favorite part of her high school experience has been the speech and debate team.
Randie has been very active in speech and debate throughout her four year high school career. She has had four years of experience in congressional debate, as well as in Dramatic Interpretation and Impromptu speaking. She has spent two years working on her Duo, performed with a partner, and her Domestic Extemporaneous speeches. She has also spent one year debating in Public Forum style debates.
One of her favorite highlights of her high school experience is winning the championship title at the state debate tournament during her freshman year.
Randie plans to continue with the skills she has learned from debate as she attends the University of Nevada Las Vegas and majors in communications. Randie plans on becoming a lobbyist after graduation from college.
“I’m glad for the experience,” Randie said. When asked about advice for underclassmen she commented, “Don’t take your teachers for granted, because they do a lot. Don’t think that they are stupid, because they helped me so much!”
Cody Jessen has also kept busy during high school. Cody is the current Moapa Valley FFA Chapter president. He has been in FFA for four years and he says that he has loved every second of it.
“I have gone to every event that FFA allows us to go to,” Cody said. “I went to every Summer Leadership Conference, and every Convention except for Winter Leadership Training this past year.”
Aside from camps and trips, Cody has also attended every Pirate football game. But he never sat in the bleachers.
“Every year we did the cannon,” he said. “We’d cook food and fire the cannon. That was pretty fun.”
Every time that the pirates scored a touchdown, Cody along with other FFA friends were in charge of setting off the iconic cannon.
Jessen also took welding for four years. Because of this skill, he now gets paid to fix up and work on 4-wheelers and dirt bikes.
After high school, Cody plans to serve an LDS mission before going to college. He hopes to become a lineman for an electric utility.
Cody gave this advice to the underclassmen: “Go to every assembly and pep assembly and event that the school puts on whether you think it’s fun or not, because usually, it is.”
His parting advice was, “It goes by pretty quick. Take time to slow things down and make memories.”
