MONMOUTH, Ill. — Members of Monmouth College’s
Speech & Debate Team traveled to Colorado Springs, Colo., last weekend to
compete at the Al Johnson Forensics Invitational at Colorado College.
Monmouth was one of 36 schools from 21 states
participating. Competing were sophomores Ron Bronson, Brandie Miller and
Josh Sonnenburg and freshmen Michelle Anstett, Emily Langdon and Christina
Simpson.
“This was the toughest competition we’ve faced in
our two-year history,” said Bronson.
The first two days of the tournament featured
three preliminary debate rounds, with teams being matched according to
their performance in past rounds and speaker ratings. On the third day,
the top 32 teams with the best records advanced to a single-elimination
playoff to determine the tournament’s champion.
In the varsity division, Bronson and Sonnenburg
were one of 80 teams in the field. They finished in the top half,
recording wins against teams from Southern Methodist University and Knox
College, beating out teams from the Air Force Academy, St. Louis’
Washington University, Grinnell, Texas Tech, Northern Arizona and Notre
Dame, among others.
“We traveled close to a thousand miles to debate a
school that’s down the road,” said Sonnenburg. “It was a bit ironic.”
In intercollegiate competition, Monmouth debaters
are a combined 6-0 against Knox College teams the past two seasons.
As one of their opponents, Bronson and Sonnenburg
drew a team from Oregon’s Lewis & Clark College that was rated No. 2 in
the nation. In a debate on whether British Prime Minister Tony Blair
should be voted out of office, Bronson and Sonnenburg held their own, with
Sonnenburg being rated the second-best speaker in the round. They lost the
round by only two speaker points.
“It was by far our best round of the tournament,”
said Bronson, who reported that Lewis & Clark ended up winning the
tournament’s final round against a team from Cal State-Long Beach.
In the novice division, Langdon and Miller
competed in a 28-team field. They had a strong showing, losing by one
point to the University of Houston and by .02 point against the University
of Notre Dame. They defeated a team from Eastern New Mexico University in
a debate on whether the U.S. should give loans rather than grants to
refinance the reconstruction of Iraq. Simpson also competed in the novice
division with Knox College’s Devon Miller and defeated the University of
Houston in the third round.
MC also participated in individual speech events
for the first time since 1972. Anstett competed in prose interpretation,
while Miller and Sonnenburg competed in impromptu speaking.
Overall, the group said the competition was well
worth driving more 2,000 miles round trip in three days and financing a
large part of the trip themselves.
“Despite everything we had to go through to make
this trip a reality, we had the opportunity to show that we can compete
with the some of the best competitors the country has to offer,” said
Bronson.
