Havre speech and debate gives strong showing at home tournament

Press release

Havre High School’s small team competing at its home speech, drama and debate tournament did well Saturday, bringing home some top placings and the first place team finish in Class A speech.

Browning took second in Class A speech Saturday, and won the first-place finish in Class A drama.

In Class B speech, Conrad took first followed by Shelby in second and Choteau in third.

Simms won the Class C speech award, followed by CJI in second and North Star in third.

In Class B drama, Choteau took the top honors followed by Shelby in second and Conrad in third.

And North Star took first in Class C drama, followed by Sunburst in second.

Havre head coach Tim Leeds said the tournament went well, with quite a few students from 10 schools braving the wintry weather to compete in Havre.

“It was a good turnout at what was, literally, our ice-breaker tournament,” Leeds said. “We had an excellent turnout from local residents judging for us, which helped the tournament run smoothly.”

In impromptu speaking, Havre speakers dominated the early rounds.

Sophomore Paige Anderson, competing in her second year for Havre, took perfect marks in preliminary rounds to break into the finals round in first place.

She was closely followed by junior Sienna Dennis, a third-year Blue Pony speaker, who took a first-place and two second-place finishes in preliminaries to head to finals in second place.

But a tough topic took its toll in finals — in the event, students are handed the topic when they come into the room and have three minutes to prepare a five-minute speech — and a speaker from Simms who went into finals in third place slipped by to take first. Dennis ended up in second place and Anderson took third.

In informative speaking, senior Carinna Kline, who competed in debate for three years before switching to her new event last January, did well including earning one first-place mark in preliminaries to take third for Havre.

Junior Trinity Olsen and sophomore Lyvia Little changed events this season — Olson was in interpretative speaking last year and Little competed in public forum debate before switching to interpretive speaking — and duked it out in three rounds as the tournament’s only Lincoln-Douglas debater.

Little won two of the rounds to take first place, but Olsen won one round in her second-place finish.

Leeds praised the judges coming out in the cold to help the tournament.

“We couldn’t put these on without people volunteering their time on a weekend, and we had a great showing,” he said. “We had people who judge almost every year, some people who had judged but not for some time, and some brand-new people rating the students. I think they all enjoyed themselves, and I hope so.”

Havre next travels to Glasgow this weekend to compete at the Scotties’ invitational tournament.