New coach, same great team

With a new coach but an experienced team, the Green River High School Speech and Debate program is hitting the ground running this year, already bringing home top finishes only two tournaments into the season.

"So far it's going pretty well," Head Coach Jericho Morrell said. "We've got a good team."

The team has over 30 students on the roster currently, almost a dozen of whom are seniors, and Morrell expects to get even more students joining now that the high school's latest theatrical production has wrapped up.

"Luckily I have a good, experienced team, so they're pretty self-sufficient," Morrell said.

Having a team that can largely take care of themselves is especially helpful for Morrell as he begins his first year of coaching and gets adjusted to the program.

"It's quite the learning experience," Morrell said. "I did speech and debate all four years that I was in high school, so I have experience that way. And I've judged over the last 30 years, several tournaments. But I have no coaching experience at all. So it's quite the learning curve still."

After asking other coaches around the state at what point they started to feel like they knew what they were doing, Morrell had some who've coached for the last decade answer that they'll let him know once they get there.

With the knowledge that there's always more to learn, Morrell has been spending time on the National Speech and Debate Association Website, taking in as much information as he can.

In addition to the challenge of coaching for the first time, Morrell feels the weight of the legacy left by his predecessor.

"Dan Parson left behind a very strong program," he explained. "They've always been very competitive, very strong, and just a good group of kids. And so for me, those are huge shoes to fill, to be able to go forward and keep that progress going in a way that would make the community proud and make the school proud and just be able to continue to be successful."

Morrell also recognizes the strong sense of community among the speech and debate students that Parson established, and he hopes to keep it going, especially since being able to work with the kids is the thing the's most excited about.

"I have a passion for speech and debate as a whole, and [I want] to be able to share that with the kids and to be able to establish that with them so that they can carry forth," he said.

That passion for speech and debate comes from a strong belief in the power of the program to help students, both in school and in life.

"When I was interviewed for this job, they asked me why I wanted to be involved in speech and debate. And I told them that I think that there's no extracurricular activity out there that provides more for these young adults' future than speech and debate does," Morrell explained. "They learn all the things that they would learn in any other activity. They learn hard work and perseverance and teamwork and all of those kinds of things. But it doesn't matter what you go into when you leave high school, communication is key. And they learn how to communicate, they learn how to see things from both sides, they learn how to form an argument or a statement in a way that can be understood and be made clear and concise, they learn how to form their opinions and express their opinions."

When it comes to activities, Morrell believes nothing can benefit students in the same way that speech and debate does.

He also believes in the strength and ability of the current GRHS program, which has a long history of excellence.

"I told the kids we only have one goal, and that's to win State," Morrell said. "That's it. Real simple."

Last year Morrell traveled with the team to the State tournament, where they lost by only two points after having a stomach virus go through the team. If they were able to come so close to winning while being sick, Morrell believes it should be easy to take home the Championship this year.

He also had the opportunity to travel to the Nationals competition as a judge, where he watched the finalists and saw their potential.

"We've got kids that have all that talent, and if we can get it focused there's no reason that we couldn't win State and have several kids on stage at Nationals," Morrell said.

Along with Assistant Coaches Diane Kurth and John Howard, Coach Morrell is already seeing the potential of the students in action this season.

After the team started practicing in October, the season began with the "Quacktastic Rock Springs Extravaganza" two weekends ago. Green River went up against eight other teams participating in both novice and varsity events and took second in 3A. One of the standouts from the tournament was Jasper Kannah, who took first place in Program Oral Interpretation.

Last weekend the team brought home their first win of the season, taking first in 3A Sweepstakes at the Kelly Walsh NIETOC Tournament. Green River competed against some of the largest and most talented teams across the region and the country, including schools from Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and even California and Georgia. The varsity team standout was Leo Evans, who took first in Poetry, second in POI and seventh in Drama.

"This was the first tough tournament of the year going against some of the larger 4A schools," Morrell said. "We held our own and let them know Green River is still a powerhouse."

This week the team will continue their season at Star Valley.