Bigfork High School’s Speech and Debate team is back in action again after taking a year off. The team just finished their 2021-2022 season at state finals this past weekend, where Tyler Broesel took 3rd place and Molly Kurkowski took 7th place in Extemporaneous Speaking. The team also won their Class B division earlier in January.

Charlie Appleby led the team to many victories during his 15 years as their coach, but stepped down to assume his new role as Middle School Principal a couple of years ago. No one else was able to take over coaching duties for the team, so it was disbanded until Cosmo Schroeder approached the school asking to get involved last year.

“I didn’t even know any of that and when I walked in six or eight months ago and said ‘Hey, I’d love to volunteer with the team,’...And they said ‘Well, we don’t have a team, we don’t have a coach, would you be interested in doing it?’ It was a little bit more than I anticipated in doing, I wasn’t looking for a big commitment, but I was looking for an opportunity to help in the community, to volunteer and help— especially high school kids, I love working with high school kids. So I was looking for a way to give back now that I’m living in a small town,”

Schroeder moved to Bigfork from Denver with his wife about two years ago. He said he was part of his Speech and Debate team in high school and attributes many important life skills to the experience. He said being on the team helped grow his confidence and taught him to be comfortable speaking in front of a crowd of people.

“It made such a big impact on my life, I wanted to try to make that same impact for kids here…I’m in this because I want to help kids develop public speaking skills, grow their self-confidence and learn how to be well-spoken. I think that’s such an important skill and it’s one that we’re losing these days,” Schroeder said.

This year the team consists of seven members. Schroeder said Appleby advised that it would be easier to start with a smaller team while he learned the ropes of coaching. Schroeder is joined this season by the school’s guidance counselor Solveig Munson who acts as a co-coach at practices and meets.

“She actually has experience coaching Speech and Debate. She particularly likes the drama stuff, so she’s been working with the two kids who have been doing more of the acting stuff, and I’ve been working with students doing the speech side of things. So, she isn’t able to go to all the meets…but she has been invaluable to helping build this program from nothing,” Schroeder said.

Speech and Debate meets can have around 15-20 different “events,” which are the different categories student’s compete in. There’s Oratory, which includes writing and giving a speech. Debate events have students compete head-to-head, arguing about a topic that both sides will respond to in a structured way. There are Drama events, where a student could give a monologue or multiple students could recite a scene from a play. Schoeder said many of the students on Bigfork’s team enjoy the Impromptu events, where they are given a topic or quote to write a speech about in a three minute time-frame. Students start out by picking an event that interests them the most and starts practicing for it throughout the week before heading to meets on the weekend.

The team competed in eight meets this season, including divisionals and state. Bigfork is a B School, so they don’t have much competition in their division on the west side of the divide. Schroeder said most of Montana’s B Schools are located on the east side of the state. Whitefish, Flathead, Glacier, Polson, and Ronan are all A Schools, which have bigger teams. The meets are bigger as well and the competition is much stiffer. Schroeder said this means their team of seven goes up against Glacier High School’s team of around 40 students. These bigger schools have teams that can cover a wide range of events and sometimes have multiple entries from one school.

Though Bigfork’s team usually doesn’t fare well against the well-established larger schools, Schroeder said there’s educational value in taking them to these meets.

“It teaches our kids what a good competitor looks like. How can you do well at these events? Well, watch these kids because they’ve been doing it for four years with coaches who have been doing it for 20, on a really big team where it’s very competitive. So I think it’s been a really great learning experience for us,” he said.

Schroeder said the team does well at meets hosted by other B division schools. He said they traveled to Shelby and Cutbank to find first place wins in Extemporaneous and Impromptu events, as well as 4th and 5th place in Dramatics, Interpretation, and 6th place in Humorous Interpretation. The team won the title at Divisionals on January 22.

At the end of the day, Schroeder said he does not care about how the team performs at competitions— he is interested in the students’ personal growth. He said there is a student who reluctantly joined the team this year and started out not enjoying the meets, but over the past few months has really come out of their shell.

“They changed to an event that they really started to like, so I’ve seen them grow over the past few months. They’ve gained a lot of self confidence, they enjoy what they’re doing, they’re having a good time. So that’s what I’m talking about, it’s been really rewarding to watch this student kind of come out of their quiet shell and grow into someone who clearly has more confidence and more poise, and is really having a good time,” Schroeder said.

Schroeder said he’s proud of all the students he’s worked with during his first season as coach. After a first successful season back, he said he hopes to expand the program next year and recruit more students.