After preparing their pieces for several months, four members of the Hays High Forensics team competed at Great Bend’s NSDA tournament April 21-22. It was the team’s first year competing in a NSDA tournament and each member came home a Nationals finalist.

The competitors were juniors Amiyah Gonzalez in Dramatic Interpretation, Tana Herreman in Humorous Interpretation, Erin Muirhead in Informative Speaking and senior Joe Factor in Program Oral Interpretation and Extemporaneous Commentary.

NSDA, National Speech and Debate Association, is an interscholastic community whose main goal is for every interested student to be able to participate in competitive speech.

The events able to be participated in are Prose, Poetry, Program Oral Interpretation, Extemporaneous Debate and Commentary, Informative Speaking, Oration Speaking, Humorous Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation and Duet Acting.

Sophomores Elias Corborn and Brittani Park also attended the tournament, but didn’t compete.

“I didn’t want to compete,” Park said. “My favorite part of Forensics is the people so it really was just a social experience for me.”

Factor said, that while he knew the NSDA tournament was on higher caliber than regular KSHAA tournaments, he wasn’t frightened.

“I wasn’t intimidated at all,” Factor said. “I’m amazing and deserve to compete at that level, but it was still a huge honor to be among the top performers in an extremely competitive tournament.”

Muirhead said that she hadn’t expected the team to do as well as they had.

“It was so scary,” Muirhead said. “It felt great to do so well because we didn’t even know what we were doing until it was over. Literally it was one giant panic attack, but it all paid off.”

A general consensus of the team was that their favorite part of the tournament was when their hotel lost power whilst they were swimming.

“We were swimming in pool and all the lights just went off,” Factor said. “Our food arrived right when they went off, so we just ate our Braum’s in the dark next to the pool in our towels.”

Overall, the team said that the experience was worth the stress.

“It turned out pretty great,” Factor said. “My favorite part of Forensics is winning.”

18agonzalez@usd489.com