COUGAR PRIDE Around Campus
Friday, March 28, 2025
Page 7
Courtesy Photo
The PCHS Speech and Debate team has found much success since restarting the program.
Speech and Debate Team Creating New Legacy
By BRIANNA DUNN Cougar Growl Staff The Pulaski County speech
and debate team now has two new State Titles to their names and two students who have qualified for nationals. The Speech and Debate club, formerly known as Forensics, is a club where people compete in public speaking events. There are speech events and interpretation events where they will interpret literature. There are 10 total categories. There are two branches within each of those categories. On the speech side, they have interpre- tation and public speaking. The Original oratory category is a research paper you write ahead of time, and you can only have up to 150 words of quoted text. You write the research paper in an argumentative or persuasive format. You have 10 minutes to deliver your memorized speech to the judges. Extemporaneous Speaking is any political speech. Before the competition, they will give you a category. Then you get to research the category they give you. When you get to the competition, you draw a question, and you don’t know what that question is going to be, but it’s gonna be about one of the categories you studied. You will then have 30 minutes to pre- pare a seven-minute speech. Impromptu is where you have seven minutes to plan and deliver a speech on a random topic. They will judge you on your speaking skills, like eye contact, how well organized it was, whether the points actually made sense, and if there was good evidence. Interpretation is completely different. Interpretation is litera- ture. It could be anything from a play or a short story to poems. You take that literature and bring it to life. There are also categories inside of interpretation. These cat- egories are poetry interpretation, prose interpretation, humorous interpretation, dramatic interpre-
Courtesy Photos Mrs. Smith (left) helped revive the program. In the center photo, we see Haven Cook and Zariah Ratcliffe. In the photo on the right we have Qyle and Jordan English.
tation, and duo interpretation. Each of these categories is 10 minutes long, and they have to be memorized, except for prose and poetry. Mrs. Smith says her favorite thing about speech and debate is watching students discover their passion for literature and for pub- lic speaking. ¨It’s something most people feel like they can’t do and are absolutely terrified of,” Mrs. Smith said.¨ She added that she loves to watch them see that they’re good at it and start to work toward big- ger goals and find that it’s a pas- sion of theirs. She says her experi- ence coaching speech and debate has been formative and a real learning experience. Before, she had never been an official coach for anything. ¨Learning that dynamic has been interesting because it’s differ- ent from teaching.” She says it has been a good ex- perience but also challenging. She says not to be afraid to join. “This is an exclusive environ- ment, it’s a team environment so you’re gonna have people who are gonna have your back,¨ she added. Haven Cook and Zariah Rat- cliffe came in first place for the humorous duo. Zariah says her favorite thing about speech and debate is the people, how no one
makes fun of you, and competing against others. This is Haven’s first year doing speech and debate, but she says her experience has been really good. Haven and Zariah both say not to be afraid to join. ¨I would say just do it because I thought it would be bad when I first started doing it, but then you get there and you win and you’re fine.¨ Haven says it feels really good to be a part of the team. ¨It feels really good because after every competition we go and get a buffet and it’s really nice¨. Zariah says she loves her teacher, all the people who do speech and debate, the bus rides, and everything about speech and debate. She says you shouldn’t be afraid to join. ¨You only go to high school once and you shouldn’t have to care about what other people think.¨ She also says anyone who wants to join speech and debate should. ¨You have nothing to lose and you only go through high school once.¨ Jordan and Qyle English both qualified for nationals. Qyle says he’s very excited because he and his brother have never been to nationals before. ¨He´s a senior so I’m just ex-
cited to be going there with him.¨ Jordan says he is also very ex- cited but also a little nervous. Qyle says he is gonna practice a lot and work on his accents because in speech and debate, they have really weird accents. Jordan added that he’s going to do the same thing he would for the VHSL competition. ¨I’m really just trying to focus on it and figuring out the differ- ences between VHSL and nation- als and also keep in mind that they have different scoring.¨ Qyle says his favorite thing about speech and debate is its fun and he enjoys always doing something. ¨I’m never bored.¨ Jordan says his experience has been all positive. ¨Everybody who is in speech and debate really wants to be in it.¨ Qyle says his experience has been really hard but he doesn’t mind it. ¨It’s been really hard but at the same time I like a challenge.¨ This will be Qyles second year doing speech and debate and Jor- dans’ third year. Jordan has been doing speech and debate since sophomore year. ¨We hadn’t done speech and debate for 25 years before, and so I’m the oldest one doing it in Pulaski County High School.”
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