A dozen Flathead Valley high school students have qualified for the national speech and debate meet.

At the National Speech and Debate Association’s Montana qualifying tournament in Bozeman on Saturday, five Glacier High School students, five Flathead students and two Columbia Falls students advanced to the national meet in June in Salt Lake City.

Glacier qualifiers are Aaron Robinson and Brock Adkins in Duo Interpretation, Anika Fritz in Dramatic Interpretation, Kate Giffin in Oratory and Kyersten Siebanaler in Congressional Debate-Senate.

Flathead qualifiers are Parker Kouns and Wyatt Dykhuizen in Duo Interpretation, Sarah Ward in International Extemporaneous, Sophia Skwarchuk in Domestic Extemporaneous and Eli Brown in International Extemporaneous.

For Columbia Falls, Chloe Foster won Original Oratory and Ava Chisholm won Humorous Interpretation to qualify for nationals.

Flathead and Glacier also had several students finish as first alternates, which means they will compete if any national qualifiers cannot attend the summer tournament.

Flathead alternates are Ethan Hall and Edgar Hall in Duo Interpretation, Ethan Hall in Humorous Interpretation, Mason Devries in Serious Interpretation and Tristan Phillips in Informative Speaking.

Glacier alternates are Teigan Avery in Congressional Debate-House 3, Aidan Fritz in Oratory, Dylan Crandell in Domestic Extemporaneous and Anika Fritz in Informative Speaking.

Several Kalispell speakers will be making return trips to the national competition.

Kouns and Dykhuizen are four-time national qualifiers while Ward and Skwarchuk are three-time qualifiers.

Brown, Adkins and Siebenaler each have achieved nationals twice.

Robinson was a double qualifier in Bozeman with a victory with Adkins in Duo Interpretation and an individual third place in Oratory, although he can only compete in one event at nationals.

In team scoring, Glacier placed first in speech sweepstakes and second in Congress sweepstakes in Bozeman and was honored with an outstanding chapter award.

Flathead ended its speech and debate season ranked No. 72 in the nation (out of 3,252 member programs) and second in the district behind Bozeman.