National speech and debate highlights

Darren Leonhardt and Logan Kay competed at the National Speech and Debate tournament in Dallas, Texas last week as the grand finale to their 2015 speech season.

Leonhardt competed in World Schools Debate, a five-person team event that brought competitors from Korea, Mexico, Saipan, China and other countries for the week-long event.

The team Leonhardt was part of consisted of Wyoming debaters from Jackson, Greybull and Green River, all members of the Wind River District.

The team posted three wins and three losses in the newly added national event, quite an accomplishment as the team had not met face to face until 2 p.m. on Sunday with competition beginning at 8 a.m. on Monday morning.

All the cases and preparation had been done via Skype with the team getting together on their computers each evening in their different towns.

“This group of young people were simply amazing,” coach Cindy Glasson said. “To know they hadn’t even worked together as a group until 18 hours before their first match-up and had a three-three run shows a lot of intelligence and determination.”

Once the debaters were out of the running, Leonhardt went on to do a supplemental event, expository. He managed to get through two performances before being eliminated in supplementals.

Logan Kay ended his speech career on a high note at Nationals, moving through six rounds of humorous interpretation before elimination.

Kay was ranked in the top 50 percent of the 246 humor competitors, missing the “Top 60” by just 11 points.

“He set a goal for himself when he knew he’d qualified for Nationals,” Glasson said. “He wanted to get one first place ranking from a judge while he was there and he certainly managed to do that.

“It was a great way for him to finish off his senior year.”

Kay also competed in a supplemental event, storytelling.

The event is based on a children’s book of their choice and competitors must perform as if they are telling the story to a group of children.

Kay made it through two rounds as well before being eliminated.

“As a whole, the Wyoming contingent did well at Nationals,” Glasson said. “Students from all over the state qualify in the various events and we all travel separately, but once we’re at the venue, the Wyoming kids are fiercely behind each other.

“It’s wonderful to see them run into each other in the hallways and ask each other how they’re doing in rounds or how their last debate went. Sure, in Wyoming we’re competing against each other every weekend, but once they’re at Nationals they’re truly competing together as a state.”