Havre hosting Class A speech divisional tournament

Havre will be hosting the Montana Class A eastern speech, drama and debate divisional tournament in two weeks and the Havre High team is inviting people interested in judging to sign up.

Havre High School speech and debate head coach Tim Leeds said the event, Saturday, Jan. 22, will bring more than 150 students from eight schools and Havre to compete against each other to qualify for state, so it’s a big deal.

“It’s a major event,” Leeds said. “It’s the top Class A competitors from the eastern half of the state coming to Havre.”

The state Class A tournament is the following week in Corvalllis. The top 12 at divisionals in each event qualify for state.

Leeds said the event is an economic boost to the area, with students, coaches, bus drivers and often family members staying in local hotels, eating at local restaurants and so on.

As for his own team, Leeds said he is hoping for a good performance, although the team is not large.

“Havre’s hoping to do well this year,” he said. “We have a team that isn’t as big as I hoped, and we don’t have a lot of veteran competitors ... but we’ve built a strong team. We have three experienced debaters who are back, and we have some new kids on the team who are really talented.”

Leeds said last year’s competitions were all online, which some competitors didn’t want to do, and many haven’t come back. He said the experience of speaking online was valuable in its own way but he’s very glad to be back in person.

“The online tournaments were valuable ... and it was certainly better than not having competition, but the face-to-face competition is just crucial.” he said, “There’s nothing like it. It trains people in a way that remote competition just doesn’t.”

Leeds said the team is in the process of contacting judges for the event, and that he would welcome anyone who would like to judge to let him know.

He said Havre has a strong core of judges, but he’s lost contact with some of them over the years as many have changed jobs, phone numbers, email addresses and such, and he’s also interested in getting some new judges as well.

Leeds said there are no particular qualifications for judging, but those who want an idea of what they will be judging and what to look for can contact him and can attend a judging clinic Wednesday, Jan. 19, at 6 p.m. in Room 203 at Havre High School.

On a fundamental level, he said, judges will listen to the competitors and rank them based on their performance, whether it’s in debate or acting or other forms of public speaking.

Each event does have guidelines on what judges can look for.

“For instance, oratory is supposed to persuade someone about something, informative speaking is just giving you information about something, in interpretation, they (read literature aloud in an oral performance), in the acting events they act out scenes, and in debate they try to persuade people toward whatever position they’re on,” he said. “But the main thing for judging is you go in and listen to them. I mean we have guidelines for what you should be looking at, but if the judge thinks they did the best job they can give them a 1, if they think everyone else did better they can give them an 8.”

He said judging isn’t for everyone, but anyone can do it and a lot of people end up loving it.

Anyone interested can sign up online at http://bit.ly/2022HavreDivisionals or contact Leeds at [email protected].

The tournament will begin around 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 22, at Havre High School and will run until about 3 p.m. with an awards ceremony to be held at 4 p.m.

Each round of an event lasts about an hour.

Leeds said there are always bumps in the road for events like this and making sure rounds stay on time can be tricky, but the staff is competent and he has plenty of experience with events like this, so he thinks it will run smoothly.