At 7:15 on April 17, the Menomonie High School Forensics Speech team gathered onto a school bus, heading their way to Madison, for their biggest competition of the year.
Our Forensics team has worked since October to perfect their events, ranging from acting performances to addressing the public. The team has consistently shown remarkable scores across the board, in each meet winning the overall team score. After participating in multiple rounds to advance, the entire team made it to the state competition.
Because our home meet last year was canceled, the Forensics team’s funds were low due to the loss of concession sales. Captains Chloe Weiss, Abbigail Shields, and Miles Ogden planned many fundraisers to ensure our trip was successful. Thank you Captains!
Besides fundraising, the captains were responsible for many other things. From helping with practices to sending insistent reminders, our captains led our team gracefully through the season.
In the past, the entire team has enjoyed the trip to Madison tremendously. Team member Claire Hausler says, “I love everything about going to State. Madison is such a cool place to do it and it’s so cool to see other people’s pieces that we’ve never seen before.”
State Forensics is a riveting event, creating new experiences of speech. It is very exciting and very fun, and all were looking forward to it, until the bus ride.
On the trip to Madison, Coach Smith received a devastating email. Due to the impending tornado watches, Friday’s competition was cancelled, and would instead accept virtual entries. After alerting the team, they kept on with their journey, planning to record the speeches in the hotel. Subsequently, we stopped for a bathroom break at a gas station, where the skies were very clear.
After arriving in Madison, we stopped for lunch at the East Towne Mall. Following the stop, we loaded back onto the bus and to our hotel room, while the clouds gathered. Each person had a relative time to go to the coaches room in order to record their piece. However, they quickly discovered that there would be no recording, as the devices were not working properly.
In the week after, each member of the team would stay after school to record their piece, rather than performing in Madison.
After some team-bonding in the hotel pool, each team member received an alert on their phone right before the storm sirens began to ring. Madison was under a tornado warning.
From wherever we were–our rooms, the pool table, the pool–, we all sat in a hallway on the ground floor.
Luckily, there was no tornado, and no one was swept away to another land. The next day, however, we were all swept away to State Street.
After enjoying the city, we got back on the bus and headed back home.
In the week following, each member of the team had to stop into Ms. Smith’s room in order to film their piece. The week after that, we finally received our results. The team overall earned the Excellence in Speech Award for the 16th year in a row. 17 performances earned a gold, 8 earned a silver, 4 earned a bronze, and 1 earned a participation. Congratulations to the 25 team members who lettered in forensics this year, receiving either a gold or silver! Even bigger congratulations to the 2 people who received gold for both of their pieces, Addison Rue and Abbigail Shields.
While the Forensics State experience wasn’t its normal self, this year’s trip and competition served to be just as well-won as the other years, even if it was quite a bit different than years past, and has simply shown this team’s versatility, flexibility, and hard work.
