Speech and debate ready to host Worlando Beach meet this weekend

Worland High School’s speech and debate team has had a strong showing so far in the new year, and they’re ready for a weekend off to host the Worlando Beach Tournament this weekend.

They couldn’t attend some of their meets due to weather, but the ones they have made it to have shown results. The team attended a meet in Thermopolis earlier this month, earning fourth place overall in the big schools category, and Star Valley’s meet where the team pulled out first place overall.

Coach Rick Dorn said, “We have a big group of novices this year, so we’ve done really well at the novice level. We have some beginners doing really well like Ava Decker and Addison Seghetti in humor, and we hope to get it going full-strength by Natrona. Our debaters are doing well, and we hope the other events will catch up quickly. Myles Lass is very successful on the LD (Lincoln-Douglas) side, and Lucy Martinson/Tessa Barnhill and Nora Reid/Daisy Weaver are doing well on the CX (cross-examination) side”

The promise of the team’s successes thus far has them excited to host the Worlando Beach Speech and Debate Tournament at Worland High School this Friday and Saturday.

Annually, Worland’s team hosts a beach-themed tournament that has become popular with competitors across the state. Worland’s team will not be competing officially, but some novice members will enter. Otherwise, the team will be helping to run the tournament.

Dorn said, “Our meet will have 21 schools there, as we have picked up a few who had their last meet cancelled. It’ll be fun to see the reaction to the remodeling of the school.”

Dorn said his goal for the home meet is to, “make sure we run a fun, efficient meet.”

VOLUNTEERS

To learn about volunteering as a judge, contact Rick Dorn at 307-431-8390.

Jay Richard, an eight-year judge at the competition, said, “It’s really interesting how hard these kids work at this and how well they know their material, and how they put their program together on the fly. I’m a layman to what’s going on, but I’ve been judging long enough that I can get a gist of what this is, and it never ceases to amaze me the level that these kids operate at.”

He added, “To someone who’s thinking about judging, just go try it out. I started because they needed volunteers. I didn’t do it in school, I didn’t know anything about it. You don’t have to know anything, you just have to be curious and be a good listener. You can come and try to judge just one event, have some food, maybe a cookie, and decide if you like it.”

Following the Worlando Beach Tournament, Dorn said that his team has a busy February ahead of them. He said, “We will be very busy due to the lost meets so we still hope to have some success, but it’ll be a steep learning curve for a large part of the team.”

Taking a young team into late season, Dorn thinks they have a lot of work cut out for them, but a lack of experience has not stopped his team from competing so far.