Three firstyear members of Hillsdale’s forensics team won awards at a tournament without even leaving campus.
On Feb. 8 and 9, Hillsdale hosted a statewide novice tournament for the Michigan Intercollegiate Speech League. Freshman Keyona Shabazz won first place in extemporaneous, and freshman Erin Graham took first in both poetry and impromptu.
Junior Anna Wunderlich won third place in impromptu and informative.
“It’s really encouraging to know that there are upandcoming novices, who will be able to come up and take the reins when we’re gone,” said junior and team captain Brandon Butz.
Hillsdale’s forensics team worked with friends and representatives from the statewide organization to make the tournament a success.
“It’s a lot of work, but we’re part of a state organization, and by volunteering to do it, it’s a form of service to the schools in the league,” said Matthew Warner, assistant director of forensics and
debate.
Members of the team helped prepare trophies, ballots for judges, and welcome packets for competitors. They also set up the tournament so everyone always knew where to go for the next event.
They also wrote questions for the impromptu and extemporaneous events, in which competitors have a limited time to prepare a speech on a question they have never seen before.
But Butz said the hard part came during the tournament. The tabulation room is where the administrators calculate results and prepare for the next rounds. The director of MISL decided to compress the tournament due to weather.
“It was a monumental task, but we condensed it and got it done,” Butz said. “The tab room was a constant flurry all day.”
Warner said one of his friends from Central Michigan University and the Director of Individual Events for the state league helped to run the tab room.
“On the front end, everything looks fine,” Warner said. “A lot of times people have no idea that there’s a team of people pulling their hair out and banging their heads on tables and getting into arguments trying to solve problems.”
On Saturday, the speech team will travel to a tournament at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. The debate team will compete at the same tournament.
