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Havre speech wins in Conrad

Press release

The Havre speech and debate team took a small squad to Conrad with conflicts preventing several members from competing, but still saw success with the Blue Ponies winning the Class A team trophy.

Havre took first with 32 points while Browning High School took second with 11 points.

The Conrad Central Division Class BC tournament saw some hot competition with 20 schools competing. Along with teams from this area, schools from as far away as Harlowton, Denton-Geyser-Stanford and Townsend came to the tournament.

Leading the way for Havre were two first-year competitors, senior Alex Barkus and freshman LillieAnn Mecklenburg.

All three of Havre’s Lincoln-Douglas debaters went 2-1 in the preliminary rounds, with speaker points deciding their rank after that. Mecklenburg was tied for second with third-year Havre competitor Kaleb Gardner, and after several steps in a tie-breaking procedure, advanced to the finals round where she faced a debater from Great Falls Central High School.

Mecklenburg lost the finals round to take second at the tournament, her second tournament for her debating career.

Gardner, a junior, took third and Johnny Valadez, a senior who switched from impromptu speaking to Lincoln-Douglas part way through last year’s season, took fifth out of the ten Lincoln-Douglas debaters in Conrad.

Barkus, a senior competing at her first tournament, took almost perfects scores — two firsts and a second — to advance into finals in first place by one point after the preliminary rounds. After a close finals round, she slipped out of first place by two points and ended in second for Havre.

Junior Jordan Jarman, also a first-year speaker for Havre, just missed placing in the top eight. Jarman came out of preliminary rounds in a three-way tie for seventh place, but lost tie-breaking procedures to end up in ninth place in impromptu speaking at her first tournament.

The Havre team, again depleted by conflicting events, will take a small squad to Browning this weekend for the Browning High School Invitational Tournament.

After a break for Thanksgiving, the Ponies next travel to Lewistown with a full team for the Fergus County High School Invitational Tournament Dec. 2.

 

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