Apologies on canceled speech tournament

I want to apologize to anyone who drove out to the high school to judge at the speech, debate and drama tournament Saturday only to find out it was canceled.

Activities director Dennis Murphy and I spent quite a bit of time on the telephone late Friday night trying to decide whether to continue the tournament after some six schools had canceled due to the bitterly cold weather. We ended up deciding about 11:30 p.m. that the safety of the students came first, and we needed to cancel.

I know I failed to contact many judges, and I feel bad for anyone who drove out in the minus-35 weather to find a sign on the door saying the tournament was canceled.

We couldn’t put these events on without community support, and once again local residents came through for us. The tournament would have run close to 130 hours of volunteer judging, if the weather had cooperated.

Thanks again to the community for all of the support, and, again, my apologies to anyone I missed contacting who drove out to the canceled tournament.

Tim Leeds

Havre High School speech and debate coach