The Whitefish High School speech and

debate team kicks off its season Saturday with its home

tournament.

“It’s going to be a great season,”

coach Gary Carmichael said. “We have a lot of great students and

it’s always fun for them to discover their voices.”

There are 25 members on the team with

seven returning from last year. Assistant coach for the team is

Sara Mueller.

Whitefish took third place at the

Northwest A Divisional tournament last season and had six freshman

who competed at the state Class A tournament. All of them return to

the team this year.

Elsa Dodds, who won an individual state

title in original oratory as a freshman, returns to the team. She

plans to compete in Lincoln-Douglas debate this year.

Also returning is Emily Morrison. She

will again compete in humorous oral interpretation after taking

sixth place at state last season.

The team has one senior.

“We have a great group of new freshman

also,” Carmichael said. “We’re very excited about the good schedule

of tournaments.”

The team is at home Saturday in its

first tournament. Carmichael said that will provide some benefits

for competitors, but the first tournament of the season is always

difficult.

“This past week many of them just

figured out their (performance) pieces,” he said. “They’re still

diamonds in the rough.”

Some team members finished up their

participation in fall sports just last week and haven’t yet been

able to focus on speech and debate full-time, he noted.

The speech and debate

tournament schedule:

Oct. 29 - Whitefish

Nov. 5 - Browning

Nov. 18-19 - Kalispell

Dec. 3 - Libby

Dec. 9-10 Missoula

Jan. 7 - Loyola

Jan. 14 - Ronan

Jan. 21 - Divisionals at

Columbia Falls

Jan. 27-28 - State at Polson

Judges are still needed for speech,

debate and drama events at Saturday’s tournament. No experience is

necessary. To volunteer visit the high school website at

http://whs.wsd44.org/ and click on the link under news and

announcements.