With the semester coming to an end the Forensics team also prepares to finish this semester together and end it with success.
After having an overall good semester together as a team Cypress College’s Forensics team showed that they can end on an even better note by bringing home many awards in their last major event at Cool-Off Tournament hosted by the Pacific Southwest Collegic Forensics Association. This tournament was held for regional novices and featured 11 different categories for students to participate in. It was hosted at Saddleback College on April 25th and 26th. Some include speech to entertain, communication analysis, poetry, oral interpretation, debate, and more. Both community colleges and universities such as Fullerton College, Orange Coast College, Irvine Valley College, Cal State Long Beach, Cal State Northridge participated, all together 21 different schools participated in the event.
Even among the many different schools participating Cypress College managed to take home the 3rd place sweepstakes award which is the overall team award. According to Liana Koeppel, Director of Forensics, it was a young team this semester and most were novices competing for the first time this year. Together as a team they were successful but individuals also showed their talents in different sectors.
Ashley Lentz and Jace Hanavan took gold in Parliamentary debate. They participated in four preliminary rounds and one final round before taking gold.
Lentz also won top speaker and 2nd place in programmed oral interpretation (POI) , which is when students perform a literature on a specific theme.
Hanavan and Steven Hardy were both finalists in Impromptu speaking.
Sara Lobato took 1st place in informative speaking and 3rd in POI.
Megan Imperial took 1st in POI. “To win gold after working on this for months is really humbling. I’m really thankful to my team.”
Megan Imperial, 1st place winner in POI.
Even though most of the team were new competitors they manage to bring home many awards and recognition. “Well I didn’t think I was going to do as well as I did. I’d been really upset with not breaking states so my hopes were down going in to this tournament. Yet, somehow my debate partner and I did really well,” said Ashley Lentz.
Overall the forensics team managed to end the semester with many achievements. Koeppel said, “The students have worked very hard and it’s nice to see their hard work pay off in success.”
