Havre High speakers compete at state in Corvallis

Press release

The Havre High School speech and debate team didn’t bring any medals back from the state Class A tournament in Corvallis, but the head coach praised his team’s efforts.

“This is the toughest Class A meet of the year, and I hoped we would have more success, but our speakers did their all and had some success,” head coach Tim Leeds said. “We had the talent to bring home some medals, but this is a young team and they still did well.”

The tournament saw teams from 23 Class A schools compete Friday and Saturday at Corvallis High School.

Veteran Blue Pony public forum team Dartanion Kaftan and Riley Klein, both seniors, saw the most success in Corvallis. They started out with a win against a team from Laurel, receiving perfect speaker points as well a the win, but lost the next two rounds in tough debates against speakers from Frenchtown and another Laurel team.

They came back for another win, this time against a team from Whitefish, but lost a close match against Columbia Falls debaters and did not make the cut to quarterfinals.

First-year debaters Caitlynn “Corbyn” Ehry, a junior, and Carinna Kline, a sophomore, had some close rounds with complimentary comments from some of the judges, but were not able to break into finals with a 1-4 record. They had a bye in the second round and debated two teams from Laurel and debaters from Lockwood and Frenchtown.

Third-year Lincoln-Douglas debater Paige Bertelsen pulled a win against a debater from Libby but suffered losses in close rounds against two Fergus High School debaters and debaters from Columbia Falls and East Helena.

Junior Sterling Shelton, a first-year competitor, had judges compliment his work but was unable to pull off wins. Shelton suffered losses against debaters from Corvallis, Frenchtown and Fergus and against Whitefish debaters in the final two preliminary rounds.

On the speech side, Havre’s competitors, all first-year speakers, received some good ratings in some rounds and complimentary comments from judges, but they were unable to break into the semifinals in their events.

Freshman Sienna Dennis competed for Havre in impromptu speaking and junior Sophia Dawson and freshman Izabelle “Izzy” Hagen represented Havre in the speech events.

The Havre team now takes a week off as it prepares for the Eastern Montana National Speech and Debate Association District’s national qualifier tournament, set for Feb. 11-12 in Billings.

At that tournament, students from NSDA member schools of all classes will vie for chance to travel and compete at the national tournament, set for June 12-17 in Louisville, Kentucky.