On Fri., Mar. 20 and Sat., Mar. 21 Speech and Debate participated in a State tournament at ASU. Four students placed in four categories, and McClintock placed fifth in Sweeps.
Each tournament is divided into three different rounds, from preliminary to semi-finals to finals.
Sophomore Emily Wescott placed sixth in Humorous Interpretation.
“[The moment I found out about my place in the finals] the whole team that was around me dogpiled me, telling me ‘good job,’” Wescott said. “It was really cool to have people around you that care about your success.”
Wescott’s place in Humorous Interpretation was unexpected to her. She was expected to shorten a humorous play script to less than ten minutes and then perform it.
“She does debate, mostly,” senior Fargo Tbahki said. “She’s been doing humor all year, and to finally see her get to finals was really cool.”
Tbahki himself placed first in both Dramatic Interpretation and Impromptu. For Dramatic Interpretation, Tbahki received a script to shorten while still keeping the essential elements, similar to Humorous Interpretation. For Impromptu, he received three separate topics to talk about them, then given seven minutes to both prepare a speech and present it.
“For me, drama is a little easier because I’m an actor and it’s closer to what I’m used to doing, but it’s definitely difficult getting used to not having props,” Tbahki said.
Freshmen Vincent Gomez and Michael Bernard together placed sixth in Duet Acting. They were given a script to perform, but in this case working together.
“We went into our first tournament; we barely knew our lines but we got through it,” Gomez said. “We improved over the rest of the tournaments.”