The 2015-2016 Speech and Debate season began the first week of October, and had many successes already including  duo, prose, declamation, extemporaneous, discussion, congress, and poetry. Speech members will compete in a total of 27 tournaments this year. So far in the months of October and November they competed in six tournaments, three were debate tournaments. The Speech and Debate team competes with schools all over Northern Indiana. In the month of October, there were three congress competitions. Nicole Keller, Trent McKenzie, and Jack Garner were awarded with Chamber Champions. In the month of November, there were two speech competitions at Plymouth High School and Elkhart Memorial in which Taylor Drake, Nicole Keller, Jack Garner, Katy Smith, Andrew Haines, Jillian Smith, and Alejandra Diaz participated.

Olivia Wendel said, “I do believe that we have a strong team this year, which is awesome!” Wendel then went on to explain what a typical day looks like for a speech member. She said, “Well, we typically get to the school around 5 a.m., give or take a little, then we arrive at the school of the competition, then we compete and win!”

Mrs. Tyree said, “We have 15 different speech events and five different debate events, so we start with what students like and then go from there trying to make a match between a student and an event.  For example, if a student loves current events, then we would not talk to them about drama or humor, but focus on extemp, discussion, congress, etc. If the student loves to write, then we would look at original oratory or original performance.  So it does take some time to get the student with the correct event for their strengths and talents.”

While it may take some time, Mrs. Tyree said, “It is a great program and a lot of fun!”The Speech and Debate team have competitions every Saturday all year round.

Novice congress team Photo by Nicole Keller