Speakers face changes, challenges in new season

The Columbia Falls speech and debate team starts the season Oct. 31 with a kickoff in Kalispell.

It is a “rebuilding year” for the team, coach Tara Norick said. Eight seniors graduated after last season, leaving the team with only three seniors. However, it has a “strong group of juniors,” Norick said. The team has a total of 51 students. A few will be missing in the first few weeks as fall sports finish up.

New assistant coaches this season are Brynn Cadigan, who was a speech coach at Shelby High School and is now an English teacher at Columbia Falls High School, and Alissa Militello, who coached junior varsity at Flathead High School for the past few years. The assistant coaches of the past four years resigned at the same time due to other obligations, Norick said.

She said students to keep an eye on who were strong speakers last year are senior Emily Getts in original oratory and expository speaking, juniors Annabel Conger and Colin Norick in policy debate, and sophomore Ava Chisholm and junior Jerelyn Jones in oral interpretation.

Instead of four divisions in the state, there will be two this season. The nine class A teams in the west will compete in a super divisional in Hamilton, Norick said. Then they will take on the top teams in the east at state.

“It’s going to be a tough tournament,” she said.

Students will have a chance to compete in a new event this year called public forum debate, which Class AA has been doing for years. Also new this year, the class A coaches will use a computer program to set up each tournament and keep track of scoring. This change won’t impact the students, only the coaches who have to learn it.

Whether this program makes it easier or not “remains to be seen,” Norick said. “It is a change that is necessary to stay in line with the rest of the state.” Tourneys have grown larger because of collaboration between the class A and AA schools.

Columbia Falls will host a tournament Jan. 9, 2016.

It will be “a challenging year,” but they’re looking forward to it, Norick said. Each year the team has to decide how much they want the championship and how hard they are willing to work, she noted.