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The NS Speech & Debate team took 5th place at state last month, their highest at state in the last 30 years.
The competition took place at Carbon High and USU Eastern on March 15-16. In addition to the 5th place sweep-stakes, team members took home individual awards. Wyatt Bills placed second in Student Congress and Foreign Extemp, Mary Sage Ivory placing third in Interps, and Merrick Anderson and Jackson Hightower took third in Policy. Along with Julian Stavros and Luke Olson making it to the quarter finals in Public Forum and Kortney Mitchell taking ninth in Student Congress.
Competition can be intense, and waiting for results can be even more so, students don’t find out how they did in their competitions until the end of the second day. However, the wave of excitement that comes when students find out they’ve placed makes the waiting worth it.
“First of all, I didn’t think I was going to make it to finals,” Ivory said. “And then I did make it to finals — which is crazy — but I looked at all the people in the room and was like, ‘I’m not getting this’, so I was like, ‘it’s fine I won’t go to the second day.’ And then, I was doing a pageant, that’s why I couldn’t go the second day. I got a
text from Isabell, and she was like ‘You got third!’ and I was like ‘What?’ It was crazy, and so I was just freaking out. I had to go into the audience and tell my mom, I was like, ‘Guess what!?’”
Students don’t know they’ve placed until it is announced on the second day. However, the students can tell when they’ve done well. For some students this isthrough a mental list of what they needed to accomplish.
“If I’m feeling good about a round usually, I know I was able to give my strong cases,” Bills said. “I know for myself that I have a good spot in the ranking, I was asking good questions, I was giving good cases.”
Other students know they’ve done well in an event because they just sense it.
“You just kinda know,” Ivory said. “You just feel it after you’re done, like that was good, you still feel it lingering in the air, that feeling and that emotion, and you’re just like ‘Okay that was good.’”
However, if they don’t feel like they did well they can be a little over-critical and down on themselves. Because of this, the Speech and Debate Coach Alex Bailey feels it’s important to keep their morale up, even if they didn’t do necessarily well at competition.
“These kids are harder on themselves than probably anyone else,” Bailey said. “So I try to help them see their growth and that they are improving, even if they don’t feel like it or their results for that one competition don’t necessarily show it. I see so much growth because I’m with them and you know a judge who spends an hour with them is not going to understand as well as these people that are with them all year long.”
While the competitions can be a heavy contributor to why students join the class/club, it isn’t the only reason.
Some students join Speech and Debate because their interests already align with some of the events. It gives these students a chance to express their interests in a more professional way.
“It’s definitely one of the biggest passions I have, especially with Congress,” Bills said. “I’ve always been a very politically vocal person… Congress is some- thing that allows me to do that in a waythat is more serious. I’m able to roleplay being in a legislative session. I also just have a lot of general political knowledge.”
Not only is it beneficial by letting students express their interests, but it also helps them build general life skills.
“It teaches you so many life lessons.” Ivory said. “It doesn’t matter what fi eld you go into after school, you are going to have to learn how to speak to people and learn how to speak in public. I feel like that’s such a strong skill that’s lacking so much, especially now.”
