Havre hosts successful divisional speech, drama and debate tournament

Editor's note: This version corrects that Dartanion Kaftan and Riley Klein are seniors.

Despite a rocky start, the state eastern Class A speech, drama and debate divisional tournament appears to have gone well Saturday, with all of host Havre's speech and debate competitors qualifying for state and a wealth of new judges showing up to the event.

Head Havre High School speech and debate coach Tim Leeds said he wanted to thank all of the community members, the Havre school district and the visiting coaches for their help with the tournament, which wouldn't have gone nearly as well as it did were in not for so many people pitching in.

"It ended up going really, really well, but that's all thanks to the community members and the visiting coaches," Leeds said.

He said his team did very well this year, with all 10 competitors qualifying for state, and taking third in public forum debate.

"I'm really happy with how we did," he said.

Leading the charge for the Ponies was veteran public forum debate team Dartanion Kaftan and Riley Klein, both seniors, placing third, just missing going to finals to debate it out for first place.

First-year debaters Caitlyn "Corbyn" Ehry, a junior, and Carinna Kline, a sophomore, placed seventh.

In Lincoln-Douglas debate, third-year debater Paige Bertelsen, a junior, and first-year debater Sterling Shelton both qualified, taking ninth and 10th, respectively.

Leeds said he was especially pleased that all of Havre's first-year competitors pulled through to qualify for state, going against the cream of the crop from speech, drama and debate in the east.

In dramatic oral interpretation of literature, all of Havre's speakers, all competing in their first year, qualified as well, including junior Sophia Dawson, who took 10th, freshman Izabelle "Izzy" Hagen who took 11th and Piper Huston, also a freshman, who placed 12th.

In the most competitive event at the tournament, impromptu speaking, freshman Sienna Dennis beat several speakers in her event to take 12th.

All of these competitors will be headed to the state tournament in Corvallis Thursday for the two-day event beginning Friday morning at 11 a.m.

Preliminary rounds will continue through Saturday morning starting at 8 a.m. and the last finals round is scheduled for 4 p.m. with the awards ceremony scheduled to start at 6:30 p.m.

Tournament starts rough, ends strong

Leeds said the recent surge of COVID-19 in the community and the spread of other illnesses cost the event a fair number of judges, which was difficult to work around, but not unexpected.

"We kind of had a trainwreck in the beginning with all the illness going around through the area," he said. "We were short a pile of judges."

However, he said, visiting coaches provided a great deal of support.

"I can't say enough about how much the visiting coaches stepped up to help," he said. "They judged rounds, helped adjust the pairings and postings and gave a lot of suggestions and recommendations on how we could tweak things to make up for lost judges and help the tournament run smoothly as it went on."

Beyond the issues caused by the pandemic, he said, there are always issues in tournaments that require adjustment, and they helped with those as well.

"You always have issues fixing rounds with students dropping at the last minute, so you have to adjust pairings and rooms and judge assignments," he said.

But, he said, his greatest thanks went out to all of the people in the community, including a number of Havre teachers and administrators, who gave up their Saturdays to judge.

"It was amazing," he said. "We continued to lose judges Saturday, but, as we lost judges, more and more people showed up to help. We can't put on these tournaments without our volunteer judges, and they gave up enough time to fill more than 90 hours of competition."

Leeds said Havre has always had a good pool of judges, but there were a number of new faces this year that he's hoping will come back next year and from now on.

"We had one judge, this was her first year doing a couple rounds, and she said, 'this is really great, let me go get my fiancé,' and brought him in to judge," he said.

He said the tournament finished up more or less on time and with little complaint about the difficulties early in the event.

Leeds said he also wanted to thank all of the people from Havre Public Schools.

"Not only did they give us a place to host the tournament, with the administration and staff helping us set up and teachers loaning us their classrooms, we had a lot of people from the Havre district helping us with judging, too, some of them for the entire tournament," he said.

The tournament saw 176 students from nine schools, including Havre's, participating. The visiting schools were Park High School from Livingston, Fergus High School from Lewistown, Custer County High School from Miles City, Dawson County High School from Glendive, Laurel High School, Billings Central High School, Lockwood High School and Sidney High School.

Leeds said many student entered in two events and placed high in both and many judges commented on how good the competition was this year.