The Forensics team traveled to Shawnee Mission East Friday, Feb. 24 and Saturday, Feb. 25 to compete in their respective events. This was the second tournament of the season and junior Sophie Hsu and sophomore Jordan Powell placed fourth in public forum debate. Powell also made it to the final round in informative and took fifth overall.
Hsu describes her perspective on what forensics is, using an example from coach Shawn Rafferty.
“The way Rafferty describes it is to think of debate as cross country and then think of forensics as track,” Hsu said. “There’s a plethora of events that you can choose from for actors, for people who want to perform, but also for people who want to be more analytical. There’s a lot of options.”
Freshman Joseph Wainaina describes how he prepares for tournaments and how he practices preparing his speech for his event: domestic extemporaneous speaking where he creates a speech in five minutes with a randomly drawn topic about our country.
[In Forensics] there’s a plethora of events that you can choose from for actors, for people who want to perform, but also for people who want to be more analytical. There’s a lot of options.
— Junior Sophie Hsu
“I usually write down the structure of my speeches,” Wainaina said. “[My usual] structure is my intro, my justice statements, quotes, the question that I’m doing and the three main topics I have talked about. I usually memorize it in speech and make notes of what I did wrong for that [speech].”
Each team member prepares for their events individually, then competes against other competitors at a tournament. At this tournament, sophomore Hayden Kelo faced a few challenges: especially with creating his Lincoln Douglas case, an event where he debates by himself against another independent debater about a different topic every month.
“Waking up early in the mornings, [is] not super pleasant,” Kelo said. “Also, the amount of time I had to put into making a Lincoln Douglas case especially when it’s over something that’s kind of weird [is not fun]. I have to look back 20 years to find evidence. That’s difficult and also not fun, but I love it. I just enjoy [that] I can make smart arguments for LD in particular, and I don’t have to accept a card because what I’m saying is common sense.”
On the other hand, Hsu details what she enjoyed about the tournament and how beneficial the tournament was for her.
“I thought it was a good experience,” Hsu said. “I was able to see where my competition lies as well and what I need to work on for the future.”
This being his first year in forensics, Wainaina expresses his thoughts on the activity as a whole.
“It’s a completely new topic that so many people should explore and do,” Wainaina said, “There’s so many new things and so many good opportunities [that] can come from forensics and also some of the fun activities you can do.”
