December 8, 2014
Right down the road from 42nd and Broadway, the BGSU Falcon Forensics and Debate Team were putting on a show-stopper of their own, winning back-to-back tournaments in New York. The tournaments were hosted by Suffolk and Nassau College on December 6 & 7, 2014 and featured exceptional competition from colleges and Universities ranging from El Camino College in California to Seton Hall of New Jersey to Bridgewater of Connecticut to Texas at El Paso.
The team combined its efforts to amass a 120+ point lead over second place Texas College of El Paso with over 80% of the BGSU’s events earning final rounds. Combined, BGSU team members brought home 68 awards, including 5 of the top 6 individual speaker awards (Spencer Coile, Evan Kelly, Chris Stack, Matthew Thompson and Lexi Martinez). In individual events, BGSU earned 13 event championships in the categories of Communication Analysis, Informative Speaking, Persuasive Speaking, Poetry Interpretation, After Dinner Speaking, Impromptu Speaking, DUO Interpretation, Dramatic Interpretation, and Prose Interpretation. Overall, this was the most successful tournament weekend in 4 years as BGSU’s success culminated in a big win of the “Overall Swing Tournament Champion” honor for the weekend. This tournament caps the fall term, one of the most successful for the Falcons as they have earned top team honors at multiple tournaments and are positioned for a run at the top 10 national team ranking at the National Forensics Association Championship Tournament in April. Thus far, BGSU students have qualified a record breaking 62 events for this year’s nationals through events which began their development back in June.
Leading the success this weekend were seniors Spencer Coile (Illinois), Chris Stack (Pennsylvania) and Lexi Martinez (Texas). Members, Brooke Deck, Angela Perretta, Lindsay Bolding, Dylan House (Ohio), Evan Kelly (Illinois), Megan McGill (Texas) and Matthew Thompson (Florida) mounted impressive performances, with each member of the team earning multiple final rounds at the competition. “This was an amazing tournament. I am truly proud of their accomplishments, especially since our team is so young.” “Forensics, like most activities, relies on the experience of a group’s members. Our team really matured this weekend and it showed in the quality of their performance.” said Paul Wesley Alday, Director of Forensics and Debate.
See attached file with the listing of individual awards. individual_awards2014