After working hard all season, seven members of Green River High School’s Speech and Debate team will be headed to the National Speech and Debate tournament June 12 to 18 in Louisville, Kentucky, where it will be held in person for the first time in three years.
Green River’s Speech and Debate team went to the Wyoming State tournament two weekends ago, but several team members were unable to attend, and Green River didn’t have any team members place in finals.
“So it didn’t go well in terms of competitive success, but we learned a lot,” Coach Dan Parson said. “Anyway, we took the energy from state into the district tournament, and that went much better. We were named the Leading Chapter, which is a big deal, and that’s the third year in a row for us, which says a lot about our growth and our potential for the future.”
In addition to being named the Leading Chapter in the state at the district tournament last weekend, Green River also had five students qualify for the national tournament. Mason Tollefson qualified in Dramatic Interpretation, Abby Smith qualified in Original Oratory, Douglas Leffers qualified in Big Questions Debate, Laural Kurth qualified in Humorous Interpretation and Faith Duncan qualified in Extemporaneous Speaking - International. Two other students who competed in supplemental events can be brought to the national tournament as well, so Abby Mattson will compete in Story Telling and Mia Worrell will compete in Poetry. Three students also qualified as alternates and will be able to go to the national tournament if any of the qualifying students are unable to attend.
“I’m very excited to take them there,” Parson said, thinking about the students going to the national tournament. “It’s a big undertaking.”
Getting seven kids and two coaches from Green River, Wyoming to Louisville, Kentucky requires lots of planning and lots of funding, Parson explained. He’s already started working on ideas for fundraising to make the trip possible, from traditional ideas like bake sales to bigger undertakings like partnering with local businesses, doing raffles and hosting events. While it won’t be easy to bring everything together, Parson is ready to do whatever it takes to get the kids to Louisville.
“They work so hard and they deserve it,” he said.
The seven students going to the national tournament include team captains who have participated in Speech and Debate for year, but also several sophomores who are newer to the team.
While the more experienced students are often the ones to qualify for the national tournament, it’s a meaningful experience for all of them.
“Whey they qualify, they cry, almost every time,” Parson said. “It’s an emotional reaction when that happens.”
The emotions are justified, considering the National Speech and Debate Association’s National Tournament is the largest and most prestigious forensics tournament in the world. Parson pointed out it’s not just a tournament for every state in the country, but also for several other countries who participate. 6,000 competitors from 1,500 schools take part in the tournament.
Bringing kids from Green River to such a big tournament is always a fun experience, Parson said. It gives kids the opportunities to go to new places, visit historical sites, see settings they aren’t used to and see what a big world Speech and Debate is.
“It’s really great for them to interact with kids who do their thing and are part of their little subculture from other states,” Parson said. “I think it gives them an idea how big the world is.”
Going to the national tournament is a good way for students to get perspective, according to Parson. He said sometimes academically gifted students can feel like a big fish in a small pond in Green River, but seeing so many others doing the same thing can help them realize how many talented people there are in the world.
“But the cool thing is to look at them and say ‘you’re one of them,’” Parson said. “‘You fit in at the same level or higher than a lot of people here. You can swim in the big pond just as well as all these other people can.’”
Parson has already seen students he’s coached go on to do amazing things, and he’s proud of all of them, just as he is proud of and grateful for his team this year. Looking back at the season and the team, Parson said it was “an awfully good season” and the improvement among the team members was dramatic.
“The kids just did really remarkably good stuff,” he said. “They really grew.”
It was especially challenging for the team members to get used to competing in person again after previous seasons of virtual competitions due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Parson had several students express how different and more difficult it was to compete in person. Parson noted it takes extra time, dedication, and practice to get good at Speech and Debate, but the team put in the work all season.
The future is also looking bright for the team. Parson noted he’s seen times before where a team started small and young, like this year’s team, and went on to win strings of victories and accolades, and he believes history is about to repeat itself.
More than anything though, Parson is proud of and grateful for the team being there for each other and being there for him during a personally difficult year.
“They were just this family with each other and with me,” Parson said. “I love those guys. My team. Beautiful kids. They found a home and they made a little family.”
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