BY DAN HILDEBRAN
Monitor Editor
ORANGE PARK— A Keystone Heights High School senior won a countywide public speaking contest held at the Orange Park Rotary Club.
Bryce Couey won the Clay County competition and now advances to the next level. Students from 45 First Coast high schools were invited to participate in the competition.
Couey said his best friend, Caleb Moncrief was slated to compete in the forum but had to drop out at the last minute.
“My guidance counselor called me and told me about it, and I was like: I guess so,” Couey recalled.
Couey spoke about the Higher Education Act of 1965, part of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society program. The federal legislation created low interest loans and work-study programs for students, expanded scholarships and appropriated money for college library expansion.
“I talked about how it related to me,” Couey said of the law. “In the act it talks about low-income individuals and first-generation college students. It improved scholarships and grants for those types of students, and I am a first-generation college student.”
Couey said he tied the federal legislation to his own college application process and everything he has been through.
The KHHS senior said the event in Orange Park was the first time he has spoken in public.
“To be honest, I was really nervous,” he said.
On Feb. 17 Couey will travel to the WJCT studios in Jacksonville for a videotaping of his speech, along with the other roughly half dozen finalists.
The winner of the competition will receive scholarship money.
Couey is on Keystone’s basketball team, student council, the Future Business Leaders of America Club and the National Honor Society. He hopes to attend one of the major universities in Florida and go onto medical school.
