Forensics team hosts tourney, scores well in competition

By Angela Lingg

Sept. 25-27, HCC and Sterling College hosted the ninth annual Debates on the Plain Tournament on the HCC campus.

This tournament is one the largest regular season tournaments in the nation and attracts some large schools, such as Kansas State University, Oral Roberts University, West Texas A&M University, and several more.

In college forensics, there are no divisions like there are in sports. HCC competes in the same competitions that much larger schools do. However, HCC seems to be able to compete well against schools that out-do them in size or funding. “Community colleges compete against four-year schools and budgets, resources, size of teams, vary drastically,” said HCC head forensics coach Kenny Hopkinson. “But really it comes down to how hard you work.”

HCC co-hosted with Sterling College because in college forensics colleges are only able to host one type of each speech tournament a weekend. Between Sterling and HCC there were actually six tournaments hosted over the weekend. The tournament included one International Public Debate Association tournament, two National Forensics Association Lincoln Douglas Debate tournaments, two Forensics Individual Events tournaments, and one Novice Forensics Individual Events Tournament.

Being early in the season, HCC hosted a novice category for debate and forensics. The novice category is mostly for freshman students who are just beginning their college career in debate and forensics.

According to Hopkinson, one competitor who particularly stood out was Josh Murphy, Hutchinson. Murphy was the 2nd place Novice IDPA Debate Speaker, and 1st-place Novice Extemporaneous Speaking.

Other students who placed were Destiny Parkhurst, Hutchinson, 3rd-place Novice Informative Speaking, Conner Davis, Lehigh, 2nd-place Novice Informative Speaking, and Colin Williams, Turon, 1st-place Novice Extemporaneous Speaking.

“I think we did great,” said Hopkinson. “ We had a lot of new competitors and they all were able to hold their own in the novice divisions.”

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