2,661 points and counting ... Four-time national qualifier, Brandon Valley's Ian Candy is poised to take speech world by storm

When Ian Candy’s mom, Jessica, insisted that her freshman son get involved in the speech and oral interp programs at Brandon Valley, he initially resisted.

“‘I’m making you do this, you don’t have a choice,’” he well remembers her telling him. 

Her insistence stemmed from her own experience in speech, first as a high school student, and then as a speech coach. He, however, simply wanted to take speech with his friends.

“I showed up on the first day in this big classroom as a nervous freshman. Mrs. (Gina) Koehn was going on and on about all the kids who had all these successes, and I was like, ‘This is so boring.’ I hated it for a while. I could say I started to love it as a freshman, but that really wouldn’t be true. I didn’t really start to enjoy it until sophomore year,” he confesses.

Fast-forward four years, and Candy departs Brandon Valley with the highest number of points (currently 2,661) any student has accumulated under Koehn’s guide in her 19 years at Brandon Valley. He surpassed prior points leader, Ellen Joseph, by 15 points last month, and Candy’s not done yet with two large tournaments to go.

“I never thought there was any way anybody was going to pass that. Ellen graduated with 2,646 points, which is a huge number,” Koehn said.

Koehn relishes in sharing the story of her program’s most decorated competitor, who is aksi the 2023-24 recipient of the Rosella Blunk Award for Excellence in Oral Interp. This annual award is doled out by the South Dakota Speech Coaches Association.

Despite Candy’s success as a gifted communicator, Koehn said the award is based on more than just a score sheet.

“We’ve been really lucky at Brandon Valley. We’ve had seniors the last six or seven years win that award, and it is a recognition of our program, of our kids, and of some of the things that we try to do,” she said.

Although Candy was initially resistant to the program, Koehn encouraged him “to get on the bus just one time.” His freshman season, you see, was all done remotely via Zoom as a result of the pandemic. But Koehn saw the potential in the underclassman and was confident when competitions returned to in-person, this kid was going to shine.

“I told Ian, that this is not the way this is supposed to be. I said I want you to give it a shot next year as a sophomore …. and then he was hooked, and we have not been able to get rid of him since,” she said.

Through the years, Candy has taken top honors in multiple divisions, which elevated the gifted communicator’s passion to take his skill all the way to the national level. He is BV’s first ever four-time national qualifier and has reached the finals in both events that he’s competed in at the district tournament all four years.

“He’s just a naturally-gifted communicator,” Koehn said. “Whether that is with a humorous piece or a serious piece or in interp, in HOSA, on stage or in class, he is just a gifted communicator.”

“I guess the best way I would be able to put it is that I really like talking,” Candy shares. “Maybe that’s a problem.”

But two days before he walks across the commencement stage, he returns to the national stage in Des Moines, Iowa, for the National Individual Events Tournament of Champions. Candy will compete in both humorous interpretation and Program of Oral Interpretation (POI).

“It’s been a long journey, a lot of Saturdays at different schools, but I would say it was all worth it in the end. It’s easy to hallmark nationals as the pinnacle of your career, but I think every experience I’ve had leading up to that was just as important, because at the end of the day, I’m still giving out that message. I’m still performing, doing what I love. It would be easy to say, ‘I was the first four-year qualifier, but I wouldn’t have gotten there without the help of Ms. Koehn, without the help of my mom, without the help of my teammates. I just can’t say that it was all Ian Candy, when it was the community that supported me along the way,” Candy said.

The BVHS 2024 graduate who has a 4.0 GPA was awarded a full-ride scholarship to George Mason University in Virginia. He will major in both neuroscience and political science.

“In middle school, I had these preconceptions of where I would end up after high school, and that has just shifted so much. Even last year, if you had told me, ‘You’re going to D.C. on a full-ride for speech,’ I would have looked at you and told you that you were insane, because I didn’t even know what it was until I was 14,” he said. 

Like many high-achieving students, Candy had several colleges knocking on his door. As for choosing George Mason, he said it came down to the environment of the school and the scholarship dollars offered.

Koehn is excited to see what the “gifted communicator” will do as a member of the No. 2 speech program in the nation. 

“Over the last couple of years, we’ve talked about what he’s going to do when he grows up. Career-wise, you maybe don’t always know what you want to do, but he knew he wanted to continue this journey,” Koehn said. 

Candy came onto George Mason’s radar during a chance stop at the University’s booth during nationals last year.

“We were wandering around and stopped at the George Mason table. The coach there was impressed and came around the table and spent 45 minutes (with him),” Koehn remembers.

As it turned out, Koehn was equally impressed by what the George Mason coach was offering Candy.

“As his coach – and as a mom – listening to what she said about how they help these kids who have been high-achieving kids for four years – how do you send them out where nobody has any control. I mean, there’s nobody to say, ‘OK, it’s time to slow down.’ As his coach, sending him out there makes me happy, it makes me comfortable, and it makes me sad because we won’t see him next year very much, but they are going to push him to do what he wants to do and let him fly, but also make sure he’s not burning himself out.” 

Koehn also talks about the opportunities the D.C. area will afford Candy in the speech and debate world.

“When you’re 40, it doesn’t matter so much that you did speech and debate and competitive speaking. But when you’re 22, 23 and 24 and you’ve been doing it in high school and in college, the networking possibilities (are endless),” she said. “He’ll go to tournaments, two to three weekends a month, where he’s flying all over the country and meeting future leaders of America, and he’s going to be one of them.”

Candy’s main event through his four-year high school speech journey has been humorous interpretation (ranked 11th in the nation), which is acting based on funny characters.

“It’s all light, it’s supposed to make you have a good time, but some of my favorite experiences have been informative speaking and POI,” he said.

It’s the latter event that allowed him to talk about a topic that’s very personal to him, OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).

“That one didn’t place the highest out of all the speeches I did that year, but it was definitely the most fulfilling, because I got to speak up about something that was close to me,” Candy sais. “Through both, like the characterizations, even though stupid, funny characters might just seem ridiculous, there’s humanity to all of them. There’s a reason we’re all connecting to it and there’s still a message you can take away,” he said. “And then the advocacy, I have just enjoyed sharing my message with other people.”

“Watching him go through that and choose the pieces, this right point, this right line, and the gestures, that was probably the culmination of all of the events. There’s some light lines in there. There’s some heavy stuff, there’s speeches, there’s poetry, there’s scripts, and everything pulled together with that message. That was the one that I saw him probably work the hardest on and the one that had the most personal message for him, and that was fun to watch,” Koehn said.

As well-spoken as Candy may be, nerves still come into play each time he takes the stage.

“It would be easy to say that this helped me to overcome my fear of public speaking, but that wouldn’t be true. It just made me more comfortable with it, he said. “There was a study about people fearing public speaking more than death. I can confidently say now that I don’t fear public speaking more than death.”

Nerves, Koehn said, shouldn’t be viewed as a weakness.

“They’re a good thing, because it means you’re concerned about doing well,” she said. “If you’re nervous, it’s because you’re not prepared and Ian rarely goes into anything where he is not prepared to the ‘nth’ degree.”

Candy has certainly put in the work. When he’s not at school running through his presentations, “Especially when we’re deep in speech season, I’m running things at home for hours on end, which is a lot of late nights, but I don’t think any of them were wasted,” he said.

As he closes out this chapter of his young life, Candy remains grateful for the many positive experiences that speech afforded him.

“It gave me a lot of confidence. I’ve always been a pretty extroverted person, so speech game me the confidence to find who I am and be myself. I was able to advocate for causes because of that, which is why I ended up falling in love with the community more than anything else, and that’s why I’m excited to do this for the next four years.”