High school speakers compete at national level
Daily Inter-Lake | UPDATED 9 years, 6 months AGO
A dozen Flathead Valley students went up against some of the country’s top competitors last week at the 2016 National Speech and Debate Tournament in Salt Lake City.
Flathead High School’s Sophia Skwarchuk placed sixth in the nation in the final round in Impromptu, marking the second year in a row that a Flathead student has made the final round of this event.
Skwarchuk finished in the top 30 in Domestic Extemporaneous.
Noah Love competed as part of Montana’s World Schools Debate team, which finished in the top 14, while Wyatt Dykhuizen of Flathead advanced to the top 40 in Storytelling.
Other national qualifiers included Parker Kouns, who competed with Dykhuizen in Duo Interpretation; Sarah Ward in International Extemporaneous and Eli Brown in International Extemporaneous.
FROM GLACIER High School, three students made octafinals (the top 60 out of 400 competitors). Brock Adkins and Aaron Robinson were octafinalists in Duo Interpretation. Adkins also was an octafinalist in Poetry and went on to compete in advanced rounds in Prose.
Three-time national qualifier Josie Jolly was an octafinalist in World Debate. Aaron Robinson was an octafinalist in Duo Interpretation while making it to advanced rounds in Poetry. Dylan Crandell made it to advanced rounds in Impromptu after earlier competing in Domestic Extemporaneous.
Other Glacier national qualifiers were Anika Fritz in Dramatic Interpretation, Kate Giffin in Oratory and Kyersten Siebanaler in Congressional Debate-Senate.
Representing Columbia Falls High School, Ava Chisholm qualified for nationals in Humorous Oral Interpretation and Chloe Foster qualified in Original Oratory.