{"id":203985,"date":"2026-03-19T20:42:26","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T01:42:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=203985"},"modified":"2026-03-19T20:43:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T01:43:11","slug":"oratorical-contest-winners-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2026\/03\/19\/oratorical-contest-winners-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Oratorical contest winners&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"550\" height=\"412\" src=\"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Optimist-Club-contest-winners-2026.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-203986\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The Optimist Club of Van Wert held its annual oratorical contest earlier this month at CHP Home Care &amp; Hospice in Van Wert. Students from Crestview and Lincolnview schools presented speeches on the topic, \u201c<em>The Moment I Realized I Belonged &#8211; My Definition of Community.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0Three students from Crestview were this year\u2019s winners. Mackenzie Kreischer was first place, Makala Miller was second, and Devin Berridge placed third. The students received medallions and prize money of $300, $200, and $100 respectively. Aiden Bockrath, Grayson Bennett, and\u00a0Mackenna Germann\u00a0from Lincolnview also participated in the contest. The top two winners have the opportunity to participate in the zone competition and move on to the regional, district, national, and international contests through Optimist International to compete for scholarships. <em>Photo submitted<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Optimist Club of Van Wert held its annual oratorical contest earlier this month at CHP Home Care &amp; Hospice in Van Wert. Students from Crestview and Lincolnview schools presented speeches on the topic, \u201cThe Moment I Realized I Belonged &#8211; My Definition of Community.\u201d\u00a0Three students from Crestview were this year\u2019s winners. Mackenzie Kreischer was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-203985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-24 03:43:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203985","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203985"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203985\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":204002,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203985\/revisions\/204002"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}