Speech and debate team hosts Green River tournament

Last weekend the Green River High School speech and debate team hosted a tournament for roughly a dozen other Wyoming schools.

“We thought it went really well,” Coach Dan Parson said, adding “it’s a lot of work.”

Eleven teams from across the state came to Green River for the event, which took place last Friday and Saturday. The tournament had roughly 200 entries and 75 judges.

“It’s a much smaller tournament than it has been historically,” Parson explained, “but that’s partly because everybody’s seasons are sort of re-amping back up after being virtually shut down for a year.”

Evanston High School won the 4A division at the tournament, Riverton High School won the 3A division and Wyoming Indian High School won the 1A/2A division.

“How cool for Wyoming Indian to win,” Parson said, noting the small school hasn’t won a tournament recently. He noted Evanston also hasn’t won in some time.

Because Green River hosted the tournament, the high school’s team didn’t compete. Instead, team members focused on the many details involved in helping run the tournament.

“When we travel, somebody else has already done all of that for us,” Parson explained. “This was our turn. And it was our turn to show off our school, show off our community. You know, those were 11 teams that came here and bought food and gas and stayed in hotels, and saw what Green River and Rock Springs have to offer, especially Green River ... And it was our turn also to pay back for all the effort that they will go through. And it’s really good for my students to see how hard it is to put on a tournament.”

Team captains Mia Worrell, Abby Mattson and Douglas Leffers all agreed running the tournament was challenging.

When Mattson was asked what the hardest part was, her answer was immediate:

“Announcing awards.”

“Abby’s going to be haunted for a little while by awards,” Parson joked, but he and the other captains all reassured her she did a good job with the order and pronouncing everyone’s names.

Worrell said the hardest thing for her was keeping track of details and keeping everything running smoothly.

“Even if there was a slight hiccup, we just kind of had to overcome that and keep going,” she said.

Keeping up with and communicating changes was the challenge that stood out to Leffers, such as when a room changed and everyone had to be updated.

All three captains — and Parson — agreed physically running all over the school to keep track of things, find people and communicate was exhausting and difficult.

“All that said, at the end of it I felt a sense of reward that we pulled it off, we did it well,” Parson said. “Everyone was happy. Every coach complimented us ... especially the Jackson coaches, who are hard to please. They’re wonderful people, but they do this a lot, they help a lot, and they don’t pull punches.”

Parson stressed how proud he is of his team members.

“Even though it’s a small tournament, all the same things still have to happen,” Parson said. “So there’s a lot of moving parts and just lots of organization and logistics that have to be sorted out, so I couldn’t have done it without them.”

He pointed out both days of the tournament were long days, and most of the team was at the school from 6 or 7 a.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. He also explained none of these students had run a tournament before since tournaments were virtual last year. Team members also helped with judging.

“I mean, I choke up when I think about it, how hard they worked,” he said.

Now that the challenge of hosting their home tournament is done, the speech and debate team can get back to competing. The next two weekends the team will have virtual tournaments, first through the University of Wyoming, then with Cheyenne East. Parson has decided to make virtual tournaments optional for team members since they did so many last year, but he still encourages everyone to participate.

After the students have a break for Christmas, they’ll hit the road.

“We are traveling like crazy,” Parson said, describing the start of competition in the new year. “Every week, I think. Eight in a row or something. We will be sick of being in hotel rooms,” he joked. However, he and the team are excited for every chance they get to debate.