P.J. Wilson – For the Review. Even though Linfield was the only school not within 150 miles of Boston, its Forensics team walked away with three first-place awards for individuals and placed third overall in team events during a tournament at Suffolk University on Oct. 24.
This was the speech and debate team’s second tournament of the season.
Linfield competed against 12 schools from Oregon, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire and Maine, including Harvard University and the University of Maryland.
The forensics tournament involved multiple events, including a speech portion, where a team member is given a quote and then has seven minutes to prepare a speech about it, and a platform, in which a team member creates a persuasive speech with only 10 minutes to prepare.
“I think they had an amazing resolve,” Jackson Miller, Forensics team coach and professor of theatre and communication arts, said. “It’s a great way to start off the season, and it just shows how much work they’ve put in.”
At some tournaments, speech and debate are both portions of the overall tournament, but, in this case, the teams only competed in the speech segment.
The winners of these events included freshman Chris Forrer, who took first place in After Dinner, first place third in Program of Oral Interpretation and third place in Duo; senior Stephanie Heuser, who took fourth place in Dramatic Interpretation and fifth place in Prose; junior Colin Jones, who took second place in Rhetorical Criticism; junior Darren Valenta, who took second place in Prose; sophomore Nick Zimmers, who took third place in Poetry; and sophomore Rachel Mills, who took third place in Duo.
“It’s always nice to travel to a different region and see how they do speech and debate there,” Jones said. “It’s fun, and you get to meet people from other schools, and the travel aspect is wonderful.”
The Forensic team’s first tournament, held Oct. 10-11 at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, was also a success.
Among 25 different schools from Washington, Idaho, Louisiana and California, Linfield received five first-place awards. This tournament featured both speech and debate.
The individual awards included senior Kaitlyn Vannoy, who took first place in Forensics Criticism; Heuser, who took third place in Novice Prose; senior Kyle Helm, who took first place in Novice Prose; Zimmers and Valenta, who took first place in Open Duo; Forrer, who took fourth place in Open ADS; Jones, who took second place in Open CA; Valenta, who took first place in Open Prose; freshman Kole Kracaw as sixth place speaker; Jones as first-place speaker; Vannoy and Zimmers as semifinalists; and Jones and Kracaw as finalists.
Linfield’s next tournament will take place Nov. 6 at Lower Columbia College in Longview, Wash.