As most Upper St. Clair students were finishing last minute assignments and preparing for spring break, 19 members of the USC Forensics team boarded a bus headed for Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania, on March 21. Their destination was Susquehanna University for the Pennsylvania High School Speech League State tournament. In order to compete at this annual tournament, students must qualify by placing at a tournament held about a month earlier.
Upper St. Clair has done extremely well in the past few years, qualifying record-breaking numbers of students, and this year was no different. The expectations were high as this year’s students boarded the bus.
The competition began Friday after a late night of frantic last-minute preparations. This year’s USC representatives participated in two different debate categories in addition to seven different speech events. When the rounds were finally finished late Friday night, the anticipation began as everyone waited for the names of the advancing students to be released. Finally, the lists were posted and surprisingly almost all of the Upper St. Clair forensicators would be competing on Saturday.
Saturday proved to be just as exciting of a day as Friday. The students spoke their very best as each round became more and more competitive and the rooms dwindled down to finalists only. Finally, the last rounds finished, and the long wait for the awards ceremony began.
By the end of the ceremony, Upper St. Clair was left was a surprising number of awards. On the speech side of the team, junior Brenna Carse (extemporaneous commentary), senior Trudel Pare (Persuasive Original Oratory), and senior Madison Chafin (poetry interpretation) all walked away with first place championships; more championships than USC has ever won at once before!
Madison Chafin’s poetry win marks the second consecutive USC championship in that event. Last year Catherine Wertz won.
Other finalists in speech were junior George Sun (3rd place, extemporaneous speaking) and the duo interpretation team of junior Mandy Seiner and senior Kylee Banton, who tied for second place. Senior Qinglan Huang and junior Eva Roy made it all the way to semi-finals in their events (impromptu speaking and prose interpretation respectively). Senior Nicole Shoemaker also received an award for serving as a clerk in the Congress competition.
The debaters also fared well. Senior public forum debate team of Lizzy Faeth and Sharon Gao and the junior parliamentary team of JP Miller, Jordan Ryan, and Sydney Turnwald were among the top 8 teams in their events, while parliamentary team of Hunter Lantzman (freshman), Chase Miller (freshman), and Alex Bowman (junior) made it to the top four.
All these individual awards were not even the end of USC’s wins. The team also came in 2nd place overall in the state, the highest ranking USC has ever received. District 3, which includes USC, won the tournament overall, and the trophy will be displayed in the high school. Upper St. Clair also gathered enough points to win the rotating Lutz award. This award will also be displayed in the high school.
Overall, the competition proved to be USC forensic’s best performance in the entire history of the team. More team members made it to higher level rounds and final rounds than ever before. This tournament certainly proved a great way to close the season for many of the competitors. Two major tournaments remain in the team’s lineup for this year in late May and June.