Last week, Hillsdale’s speech and debate teams earned an award together at one of the largest national open tournaments in the Midwest.
The award was not won in a weekend, however, or even in a semester. At the Gorlok Gala, a tournament hosted by Webster University in St. Louis, Mo., the Traveling Award is given every year to the team that has earned the most cumulative points between speech and debate in all years of combined attendance. Out of more than 40 teams, Hillsdale won the award this year.
This was the 16th time the tournament has run, but Hillsdale has only attended for six years.
“We put ourselves to the top in half a decade, which took a lot of winning, year after year after year, to get that many points,”forensics coach Matthew Warner said.
On average, most teams who win the award do it in about seven years, according to debate coach Matthew Doggett. Teams earn points when members place high in preliminary rounds and also based on rankings in finals.
Warner said earning the Traveling Award was his team’s main goal this year, because they knew they were in sight of it. Forensics captain and junior Brandon Butz agreed.
“This is basically our second goal met for the year. Mission accomplished again,” he said.
The first goal was winning a speech tournament at Marietta College early in November. Hillsdale won that tournament with 70 points, the runner-up earning 21 points.
Butz and Doggett both said speech and debate have contributed about equally to Hillsdale’s success at the tournament over the years. Because this year’s debate team is young and only has five members, the forensics team contributed more to the combined points.
Junior Kenneth Manyari-Magro made it to semi-finals in Impromptu, junior Ian Fury took fifth in Extemporaneous, freshman Erin Graham was the top novice in Programmed Oral Interpretation, and Butz took fourth in After Dinner Speaking, sixth in Extemporaneous, and made it to semi finals in Impromptu.
On the debate side, every debater had a 3-3 record in individual debate, one win away from “breaking,” or making it to the next round.
Sophomore Kevin Ambrose and freshman Graham Deese broke together in junior varsity Parliamentary, a team debate event.
“Although we didn’t bring back many awards, given how young we are, this tournament was really successful,” Doggett said.
The Traveler’s Award plaque will now be in Hillsdale’s speech and debate lounge, but only for a year.
“We get it for a year and then we have to give it back to them next year, and then we start over at zero,” Doggett said.
