◆ A virtual state tournament set for speech and debate students.

Star Valley High School’s Speech and Debate Team are among a rare, few high school students throughout the nation who will participate in their State Tournament during the spring pandemic of 2020.

While a vast majority of spring competitions and state conventions have been cancelled due to COVID-19 containment measures, Wyoming High School Activities Association and the University of Wyoming, with strong encouragement from head coaches state wide, have created a plan to move forward with the Wyoming State Speech and Debate Tournament in an online format.

“The Committee of Speech and Debate Coaches for Wyoming, chaired by Irlonde Gagnon, who is the head speech coach at Jackson High School, did not want to surrender the chance for the students to compete,” said Katie Roberts, SVHS Speech Coach.  “Through diligent efforts and hours of work, they came up with a plan for an online tournament. They recruited help from University of Wyoming’s Speech and Debate team, which has successfully competed in online tournaments of its own. The WHSAA provided rules to make sure the tournament would run fairly and correctly, and then sanctioned the process. Now we have an opportunity for our team to compete April 22-25 in the 2020 State Tournament online!”

SVHS team members are extremely pleased with this arrangement after receiving the crushing news on March 12th that their tournament had been cancelled. They were already on a beautifully decorated bus and nearly halfway to the competition in Green River when they received the shocking call with news of the cancellation and orders to return home.

“The excited buzz and anticipation immediately died,” said Roberts.  “The mood became very somber and quiet, and tears were shed. Our team had spent hours after school individually and as a team to prepare for that weekend. It was a very unexpected blow, especially for the seniors.  As the reality sunk in, senior team captains stepped up to express positive thoughts. During our ride home, they reflected on how well the season had gone so far and agreed that they had already achieved some awesome results by taking 2nd place at the Jackson Tournament and 3rd at the Worland Tournament.”

“It was a bit of a shock to hear that big events like state games and tournaments were being cancelled,” Roberts continued.  “It was something we as a speech and debate team had never anticipated.  As news of all the other state and school events, and even brick and mortar classes being cancelled, the team started to let go of any chance of competing in the District Qualifiers, which is the event following state where competitors vie for a seat at the National Speech and Debate Tournament.”

Passionate leaders came to the rescue and have designed a plan for the youth to compete at their state tournament. The 2020 Wyoming High School Speech and Debate Tournament will proceed with the following guidelines: Individual events will be memorized and prerecorded only once, then submitted for judging.  These recordings will travel through rounds and progress on their own.  Judges will receive links to the groups of recordings and judge each entry against the others.

Debate and Congress rounds will compete in real-time on Zoom.  Teams will be given increased preparation time in each round to allow for the possibility of technical difficulties. All rounds and event guidelines require that all competitors participate online with no one being physically together.  Failure to follow these guidelines will result in disqualification.

“We are enthusiastically preparing for the tournament online and by phone,” said Roberts. “When the results of the tournament are announced on Saturday evening, they will be posted on the Facebook page and Instagram account of ‘Wyoming Speech and Debate.’ Everyone is welcome to watch and cross their fingers for us.”

With District Qualifiers cancelled, the same committee that created the online state tournament has proposed and been approved to design an alternative qualifying program for nationals.  They have taken the results of past tournaments to provide statistics that place individuals in positions to qualify fairly for the national tournament, which will also be online.

Nick Jardine and Caleb Thygerson have qualified to participate at Nationals in Cross Examination (Policy) Debate. Alternate qualifiers include Josef Scherbel in Humor Interpretation, Isaac Hyde and Ashley Helm in Congressional Debate, and SVHS Head Captain, Kody Miller in Informative Speaking.

“We are so proud of our students and the harmonious energy of our team this year,” said Roberts. “It has been nothing but a pleasure for Coach Julie Lewis and I to meet with them and see them grow in confidence and skill.  This online format has been a little intimidating to a few of our students, but they are rising to the challenge. We appreciate all the support from Rob Erickson and the Staff at SVHS, the support of our community, and the attention from SVI News.  We are grateful for the massive numbers of volunteer judges who helped at our home tournament. We appreciate our season-long volunteer Val Smith who gave so much time and wisdom.  Here’s to doing things in the unexpected way with gusto. Go SVHS Speech and Debate!”