Havre speech wins in Cut Bank

Press release

Havre High School speech and debate took its biggest tournament of the season so far to an invitational tournament in Cut Bank Saturday, and saw great success.

Havre won the Class A sweepstakes competition with 102 points to Browning’s 16.

“This was a great weekend for us,” head coach Tim Leeds said. “We are getting everyone on the bus as conflicting events have finished and the kids are doing very well.”

Leading the charge for the Blue Ponies was third-year Lincoln-Douglas debater Kaleb Gardner. He went 3-0 in the preliminary rounds to break into the finals round, where he defeated his teammate first-year debater LillieAnn Mecklenburg, who went 2-1 in preliminary rounds and made jt into finals based on her high speaker point awards, on a 2-1 decision in finals.

Johnny Valadez also went 2-1 in preliminary rounds, finished fourth for Havre.

Havre’s three public forum teams were the only debaters in their event at Cut Bank, and competed in a three-round round-robin, with each team getting a bye one round.

Tony Antley and Sydney Scheresky-O’Neil went undefeated to take first, while Joram Randolph and Noah Teasley defeated their teammates Eric Harrison and Xavier Ulano to take second while Ulano and Harrison took third.

Alex Barkus took second in informative speaking for Havre, while Jordan Jarman took third in impromptu speaking, Kylee Thomas took fifth in original oratory and Barrett Kilgore took sixth in dramatic oral interpretation.

The team next heads to Chester for the C-J-I invitational tournament.

“Chester looks like it will be a good-sized tournament, and we should be taking our full team this weekend,” Leeds said. “It should be a good test before the holiday break.”

After Christmas, Havre will head to Columbia Falls then Laurel before going to the Eastern Divisional Tournament in Sidney to qualify students for the state Class A tournament, being held in Corvallis this year.