Students compete in ‘sports’ of forensics

Hundreds of elementary students from at least 25 public and private schools met at Kagman Elementary School this past weekend for some friendly competition. The sport? Forensics, or speech activities.

Last Saturday, April 1, many students from Kindergarten through fifth grade came away from the competition with medals or ribbons after winning in some event, and they were just as proud and happy as anyone would be after winning a sporting event.

This coming Friday and Saturday, April 7 and 8, the junior high students who are in the Middle Grade Forensic League and the high school students in the National Forensic League will meet at Kagman High School for their competition.

Debate begins at 5pm Friday. The other events begin Saturday morning with check-in at 8am. This time, the stakes are higher as first place winners will win the opportunity to travel to the U.S. mainland for the national speech competitions in June.

Events for all student include humorous, dramatic, and duo interpretation; prose reading; poetry reading; and impromptu speech. One event exclusive to PGFC is choral speaking. An event exclusive to MSFL is declamation. MSFL and NFL will also have a Lincoln/Douglas debate, original oratory, storytelling, extemporaneous speech dealing with current events, and expository speech.

Steve Smith of PSS had the idea several years ago of forming a competitive speech organization for elementary students after seeing the success of the junior and senior high speech organizations which were already formed. That is when the Primary Grade Forensic Competition came into existence.

Marilee Norman, vice president of the NFL board, said that, all in all, students have a great time in competing, and gain much in academic and creative skills. “It helps them not only in public speaking, but also in organization skills, research skills, and in overall confidence. In this “sport” there are no losers!”

All this is made possible, she said, by a group of volunteers who sacrifice their time to help these kids: the coaches in the schools, the judges who volunteer their time on Friday evenings and Saturdays, the schools who allow all of these visitors to “invade” their premises, officials of the Public School System and the private school administrators who are so supportive, and the NFL board members.

“Time and space does not permit for me to go into detail, but this year we have even experimented with a Math Court and a Bilingual speech competition, which so far has been very successful,” Norman said.

For more information about these competitions, send an e-mail to wpr_nfl@hotmail.com. (PR)