Blue Pony forensics brings home divisional champion

Press release

The Havre High School speech and debate team fielded possibly its smallest-ever team to go to Class A Eastern Divisionals in East Helena last Saturday, but still saw the best divisional results it has seen in years.

Junior Lyvia Little, a third-year Blue Pony debater, was the only one of 14 debaters to go undefeated in four preliminary Lincoln-Douglas debate rounds, and qualified for finals. She then beat a Billings Central Catholic HIgh School in the finals round to take first and earn a divisional champion medal.

Junior Collin Snyder, a first-year Blue Pony speaker, did his best all year in preliminary rounds to earn his way into the finals round in impromptu speaking, where the speaker is given a new topic each round and has three minutes to come up with a five-minute speech. Snyder took eighth in finals to bring home a medal for the Ponies.

Junior Paige Anderson, also a third-year Havre competitor who switched to a new event this year, giving a speech with posters about the history and changes to zombie culture, had one of her strongest meets of the year but just missed breaking into finals in informative speaking, the biggest event at the meet. Anderson missed the cut by one point and beat out eight other informative speakers to finish in ninth, still qualifying for state this weekend.

Montana uses eastern and western divisionals for speech, drama and debate, with the top 12 in each event at each divisional qualifying for state.

"This was a great performance and I am looking forward to continuing strong in Laurel this weekend," head coach Tim Leeds said. "They were up against the toughest Class A competition in the state Saturday, and they pulled it off."

Leeds said it has been several years since Havre brought home a divisional champion in forensics, and it is a good showing to qualify everyone for state.

We were hoping to have a bigger team at divisionals - we started off with 13 competitors and hoped to grow that - but conflicts and other issues had kids dropping through the season," he said.

"It definitely paid off for us with the three who did stick it through the season," Leeds added. "I am really proud of these kids and rooting for them in Laurel."