Havre speakers place at Laurel

Press release

The Havre High School speech and debate team saw tough competition at another large tournament in back-to-back weekends of powerful tournaments.

The Blue Pony speakers saw students from all of the central and eastern Class A schools at the 2018 Locomotive Tournament Saturday including host Laurel High School as well as Beaverhead County High School from Dillon and eastern Class BC powerhouses such as Shepherd and Huntley Project, and students from the Class AA schools in Billings, Bozeman and Powell, Wyoming.

“This is great competition, and our speakers are learning from it and applying what they learned,” said Havre head speech and debate coach Tim Leeds. “In Laurel, we faced all of the schools we will see at the eastern Class A divisional tournament in Sidney this weekend, and last weekend in Columbia Falls, we saw most of the Class A competition from the west we will see in Corvallis at state. This was great preparation to finish the season.”

Going the furthest for Havre was first-year competitor Jordan Jarman in impromptu speaking. Jarman broke into finals and ended up in sixth place out of 27 impromptu speakers at Laurel.

In the highly competitive dramatic oral interpretation of literature, Havre’s Barrett Kilgore, also a first-year speaker, also broke into finals. Kilgore ended up in eighth place out of 39 competitors.

Also competing for Havre in Laurel were Kaleb Gardner in Lincoln-Douglas debate; Hailey Azure and Tony Antley in team policy debate; the public forum debate teams of Eric Harrison and Xavier Ulano and Joram Randolph and Noah Teasley; Alex Barkus in informative speaking; Kylee Thomas in original oratory; Mallory Schaub in dramatic oral interp, and Mackenzie Parrotte in impromptu.

At the eastern superdivisional tournament in Sidney this coming Saturday, Havre will face competitors from all of the Class A schools in the central and eastern divisions. The top 12 in each event will qualify for state.

“Our kids have been working hard and improving all season long,” Leeds said. “I have high hopes to see some great performances from the Ponies at divisionals and at state.