Havre speech sees success at massive East Helena tournament

Press release

Editor's note: This version corrects the next tournament at which Havre High School speech and debate will compete.

Havre High School speech and debate saw some success at a massive, highly competitive tournament Saturday in East Helena.

The tournament had competitors from 13 Class A schools, including Havre, coming from around the state. Those included state rivals like Whitefish, Columbia Falls, Laurel, Billings Central, Butte Central, Corvallis, Fergus, Park and Stevensville.

Three Class AA and eight BC schools rounded out the competition.

Havre took a fairly small team, but had some wins including fourth-year debater Paige Bertelsen, a senior, going 3-1 and ending up in fifth place in Lincoln-Douglas debate out of 25 competitors..

Senior Sterling Shelton, a second-year debater, went 2-2 but did not make the top eight.

Second-year public forum team Caitlyn “Corbyn” Ehry, a senior, and Carinna Kline, a junior, went 0-4 against tough competition at East Helena, which had 16 public forum teams competing.

In impromptu speaking, second-year Blue Pony speaker Sienna Dennis, a sophomore, received some good scores and comments in the preliminaries, which had 34 speakers spread out over five rooms, but did not make the cut to finals.

First-year dramatic oral interpretation of literature competitor Trinity Olsen, a sophomore in a pool of 21 competitors, also received good scores and comments but did not make finals.

Havre takes a couple of weeks off before going to the Malta High School invitational Dec. 10.