Havre High storms Cut Bank speech tourney

Special to the Daily News

Havre High School’s speech and debate team stampeded into Cut Bank last weekend, with Ponies taking four first-place finishes and the team taking first place with 88 points and Browning High School coming in second with 15 points.

Havre faced competitors from more than 12 schools, with teams coming from as far west as a AA team from Flathead High School and a Class B team from Eureka near the Canadian and Idaho borders and a Class C team from Culbertson near the North Dakota border.

The Havre charge was led by first-place finishers Esther Stocker in original oratory, Trenton Parrotte and Trenton Smith in team policy debate, Ethan Smith in serious oral interpretation of literature and Jacob Bachmeier in Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Head coach Tim Leeds said he is very happy with how the season is moving forward.

“We have more kids joining as the season progresses and they all are working hard, which is showing in the results and the ballot comments at the tournaments,” Leeds said. “We are getting stronger each week.”

Stocker took two first-place and one second-place finish in the preliminary rounds at Cut Bank, then received a perfect score in finals to take first place.

Alexandra McDermott took fifth in oratory, while fellow first-tournament competitor Desiree Bachmeier took sixth in the event.

Parrotte and Trenton Smith, competing at their first tournament as a team in debate, swept the only other policy team, a varsity pair from Flathead, to go 3-0 and take first place.

Varsity LD debater Bachmeier also went undefeated, sitting out in one bye round and defeating all four of his competitors in round-robin competition.

Ethan Smith and fellow serious interper Emily Simonson were neck-and-neck the entire tournament, with Smith edging Simonson out to take first place to her second-place finish.

Mina Everingham also was in the mix, with one low-scoring judge keeping her out of the finals round. Everingham tied to break into finals, but lost a tie-breaking procedure to end up in ninth place.

Patrick Leeds and Josiah Stocker took strong scores in preliminary rounds to break into finals in impromptu speaking, with Leeds ending in second place and Stocker finishing in eighth.

Caroline Tuss, competing in her second tournament for Havre High and her first in spontaneous oral interpration of literature, finished in fourth place, while Chris Steinmetz, also competing in his second tournament, placed fifth in memorized public address.

Also competing for Havre at Cut Bank, in the always-competitive humorous oral interp — humorous and serious interp were the deepest events with 23 competitors each — were Randi Ruhkamp, Amada Viall and Rory Everingham.

Havre next travels to Conrad Saturday for the Conrad High School invitational tournament, wrapping up competition before the Thanksgiving holiday with the C/J-I and North Star High schools cooperative tournament in Chester Saturday, Nov. 22.