Colton, CA—On February 10, 2026, Colton’s Lions Club held their annual Lions Club Speech competition, held in the Colton Public Library.
The competition consisted of eight individuals from Colton High School, with only seven of them participating. The topic for this year’s competition was “Youth Mental Health: Overcoming Barriers to Wellbeing”, with the winning prize being $125.
The Lions Club Speech Competition is an annual competition that competes within the district, and then regional, leading up to the international level, with a set of tight rules that must be followed such as the speech must be a minimum of five minutes, but no longer than ten. The competition acts as a platform for students to gain public speaking skills as well as critical thinking.
Every participant had a different approach to the prompt, some diving into their own personal struggles with mental health, others being on the nose with heavy research, and some explaining how others’ mental health affected their own.
The winner of the competition, Kristina Escobar, explained in her speech not only used research to explain the importance of overcoming barriers, but she also shared her own experience with poor mental health.
For Escobar, she wasn’t even going to attend the Lions Club Competition, until Colton High’s AP Language and Composition teacher Lucy Leyva gave her encouragement. Escobar said, “After she had read my essay, she was like, why don’t you do it? And so I was like, okay, then I guess I’ll do it. She kind of built me up a little bit, and it gave me a little bit more confidence.”
The other participants consisted of: Andres Vazquez, Leah Quinones, Susy Sanchez, Kristoff Thompson, Kristina Escobar, Briana Gill, and Richard Gonzales, each received $25 and a certificate for their participation
This year, the event has grown, with the Lions Club and Colton Library staff having to bring in extra chairs and tables for the room full of friends and families in support of the participants. Escobar said “I mean, it’s really good. It feels really nice having my family here and I’m actually really proud of everyone else that had written theirs. Everyone sounded really good. So it couldn’t have been easy.”
