Striving for success

Learning, growing, and seeing success is all just part of the experience for the Green River High School Speech and Debate team. 

The team, along with its new set of coaches at the helm, has been working hard all season and coming away with win after win.

"We've been able to take first in whichever class we were in," Head Coach Jericho Morrell said, explaining that schools are sometimes divided into 3A and 4A categories and sometimes simply divided into "large schools" and "small schools." Whether they've been in 3A or "Large Schools," Green River has been able to come away with a first place win for their category in almost all their tournaments this season. 

From November through February, the Wolves have competed in Star Valley, Cheyenne, Hot Springs, Jackson, Riverton, and Evanston, and have taken first each time. 

"The kids have been doing amazingly," Morrell said. "I'm really pleased with the team. They've worked really hard and they've done a really good job."

In addition to winning as a team, the individual team members have also seen a great deal of personal success, with students breaking into semifinals and many getting top five finishes at each tournament. 

"The highlight, for me, has just been seeing how much work the kids are able to put into it," Morrell said. 

A quote he heard recently stuck with Morrell - "Winning is being better today than you were yesterday, every day." He believes the Speech and Debate students truly exemplify this concept, consistently working to improve. 

"We're still winning because they put in the work and they're better every single time," he said. 

It's especially rewarding to watch students strive to find success, according to Morrell. He explained that some students come in and don't necessarily see success right away, but he's watched them realize that as they put the work in and try hard they can accomplish their goals.

Bethany Farmer is one example of this concept from the team who has especially impressed Morrell in the past few weeks. He explained that Farmer is a senior this year who has struggled to break through in the past, but at the Jackson tournament a few weeks ago she broke into the semifinals for the first time in her Speech and Debate career. Not only that, she made it through in two different events, competing in both Drama and Spoken Word Poetry. Farmer broke into the semifinals again in Evanston last week. 

"She's been seeing a lot of good success and so she's really impressed me with her growth and development," Morrell said of Farmer. "It's been really neat to watch."

As he's watched the students grow and find success, Morrell has also been on his own learning journey during his first season as head coach. He admitted that he's made mistakes but said he's tried to learn and grow from all of them as he works to find his place within Speech and Debate and figure out how best to fulfill his role. 

Overall, Morrell has been thankful to have such a strong team, allowing him to feel like he can sit back and observe. He's also thankful to his assistant coaches, Dianne Kurth and John Howard, for their help with this season's success. 

After months of winning, the team is admittedly starting to get tired, Morrell said, pointing out that Speech and Debate has an especially long season. However, they're coming up on the finish line now, with Districts and then State coming up in the next two weeks.

Districts is a special tournament focused on the students because it is their opportunity to qualify for Nationals, Morrell explained. Green River has about 33 entries for the tournament, as well as 10 more in Congressional Debate and two more in Big Questions Debate. Green River's team has around 30 members total, and basically the entire team will be traveling to the tournament next weekend and competing.

"You never know what's going to happen," Morrell pointed out about Districts. "We could have quite a few national qualifiers, and that would be really exciting for them to be able to go and participate in that National Tournament."

A week after Districts, half of Green River's team will travel to Cheyenne for the State tournament. Morrell explained that each school is allowed 20 entries for State, so about 14 students will make up the team for the Wolves. The coaches look through results from the entire season in order to decide who will compete at State. 

"We've got so many kids that put in so much hard work into it, so it's really hard to decide who all we're going to be taking," Morrell said.

While all the students have worked hard this year, Morrell also wanted to look at where Green River's team has been strongest to see how they can stack up against the competition, with the ultimate goal being to bring home the State Championship. And Morrell thinks they have the students to do it.

"We have a really good potential of winning," Morrell said. "The Speech and Debate team, as a whole throughout history, has had a lot of success at that, and I would like to continue that success."