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State Forensics Champions

By Natalie Shirley on May 16, 2019

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This year’s forensic season has been just as climatic as Marvel’s Avengers Endgame…thankfully with less carnage and no spoilers. We started with 10 high schoolers, the biggest team that we’ve had in quite a while. Members included: Senior - Brant Cotta, Junior - Creek Love, Sophomores - Ross Carter, Shelby Handlin-Rowell, Aubreigh Haxton, Chase Rhea, Freshman – Seth Drouhard, Jadyn Gallardo, Tori Sandoval and Luke Schulte. We competed at 8 invitational tournaments while also hosting our own invitational. We cannot say “thank you” enough to all 45 volunteers that it takes to put that on. It goes without saying that we can’t do it without all of you!

            As we competed, these guys put a beating on the other teams by constantly qualifying for finals and qualifying for state. There were 6 students that qualified this year, more than in many moons past. Four of the students were able to attend state champs or festival on May 4^th in Salina.

            State festival is a single performance, much like music, where the student receives a rating (I,II, III, etc). Aubreigh received a I for her serious solo and a II for her poetry, Jadyn received a II for her poetry, and Seth also competed.

            Brant qualified for 4 events (serious solo, poetry, prose, and IDA) to go to State Champs. Creek qualified for two events (poetry and IDA with Brant) The benefit of competing at State Champs is that you can claim that you are the 1^st, through 6^th best in the state of Kansas in your event if you make it to finals. It’s a long grilling day, with 3 rounds of competition, a semifinal, and then finally the finals round. A student can only compete in 2 events at Champs and Brant chose his Prose and the IDA with Creek.

            Here’s comes the crazy climatic part of our journey. Our power duo had placed 1^st in 7 out of the 8 invitational meets and a 2^nd. They were definitely the ones to try and beat, and many failed at that. At state, though, they barely slid by the first 3 rounds. We thought we were going home after lunch. They barely slid into prelims, again we thought we were going home after that. Nope, these boys were the last qualifier to get into finals. We were there to finish the day out and see what place they could get. Watching the results come in was nail-biting. Memories don’t go back far enough to remember an Argonia team that took a high medal in state. And then it happened (insert in the big climatic part) ...they earned 1^st place in IDA! They are the best IDA team in 1A across all of Kansas.

            It’s an understatement to say that this has been an amazing season. I am so proud of them and all of our team!