MLHS speech and debate team surprises coach, each other

MOSES LAKE — Moses Lake High School speech and debate coach Kevin Chollman said the plan for the 2023-24 school year was to get a team going again.

“My goal was just to make us very active,” he said. “We were all incredibly new. We only had two (participants) returning that had done any events or anything before. Everyone else was brand new to it.”

The high school had a speech and debate program, but interest had waned over time, and attempts to revive it were scuttled by the COVID-19 pandemic, Chollman said. 

“We have about a dozen-ish on the team this year, which is a bigger team than we’ve had in — records are hard to find, but my guess is close to 20 years. So we had to learn events, and what to do and how to do it, and all that,” he said. 

The results have exceeded his expectations, and the team’s too, really.

“From the first tournament we’ve just been — winning,” he said.

Sophia Villalpando put it a different way.

“We’ve been annihilating,” she said.

Speech and debate are two separate disciplines, requiring two different kinds of thinking and preparation. Because his team is new and he’s never coached a debate team, MLHS has only participated in speech competitions this season. 

Overall team totals include both speech and debate, but Moses Lake has managed to be competitive with just a speech team.

“The last three tournaments we went to, our team outright won the whole tournament,” Chollman said. “When we go to these tournaments, to outright win them means we have to earn more points just from our speech categories than other teams get from speech and debate. Which is pretty exciting.”

The MLHS team took the district title and will be sending seven competitors to state competition, scheduled for March 9.

Speech competition is either a solo endeavor or teams of two. Competitors have their choice of speeches, disciplines such as humorous interpretation, dramatic interpretation or an informational presentation, among others. Each competitor is ranked in relation to all other competitors, and they also receive a points award. Ava Wood said it gets confusing.

“It’s kind of weird because you can get ranked first place, but only (receive) five points — the highest you can get is 20 (points). Or you can get last place, and get all 20 points. It’s quite strange,” she said.

The decisive factor is the ranking, Chollman said; the points are used for tiebreakers.

Competitors can talk about anything. Amber Emerson said she chose a presentation on choosing AP classes. But Villalpando chose to tell the story of the movie “Tangled.”

“I want to say, I cut the movie down to 10 minutes,” Villapando said. “I do not perform a two-hour long movie. Just to clarify.”

Actually, refining the presentation is part of preparing for competition. 

“When we start practices we have (about) a month to create whatever sort of speech, or the event, we want to do for the rest of the year,” Emerson said. 

Wood chose something else entirely, the impromptu speech.

“Impromptu and tall tales — you just show up to the room, they give you a piece of paper and it has some words on it, and you make the speech on the spot,” Chollman said.

Brock Smith won a district championship by starting with a short story.

“I highlighted parts that would make a good dramatic piece, and started practicing,” he said. “I was looking for a story that had enough places where I could (add) movements, and parts where I can change the inflection of the voice.”

He’s been surprised, in some ways, by his success.

“Yes and no. I hoped and I expected that I would do well, but it’s still weird to me that I’m at this point,” he said.

Griffin Johnson and Madison Burress said they’ve gotten better at speaking in front of people.

“At the beginning, I was very quiet, but definitely speech has helped me be more social and more confident,” Burress said. 

Chollman said the team has come a long way in a short time.

“I was just telling them the other day, think back to October, when you didn’t even know what the events were, to now, where we’ve won districts and we’re sending seven to state. That’s a pretty big accomplishment,” he said.

Cheryl Schweizer may be reached via email at cschweizer@columbiabasinherald.com.

    The speech and debate team poses for a photo at Moses Lake High School.