Silverton speech students go solo to reach state finals
By Wendy Owen, The Oregonian
April 20, 2010, 4:45PM
View full sizeSilverton High School speech students Jasmine Kim and Gavin Knox, both juniors, practice a duo called Calvin and Hobbes. Both students are headed to the state speech and debate championships. While Kim is competing in Lincoln-Douglas debate and Knox in humorous interpretation, the students qualified for a separate national competition with their duo performance.As teacher Matt Ogle sat with his daughter at Doernbecher Children's Hospital this fall, his Silverton High School speech and debate team did what they thought would help him most -- they practiced their speeches.Team captains took charge and helped their new teammates, many of whom had never given a speech until this school year. Ogle had been in the midst of teaching them the basics when he had to rush his daughter to Portland.
"The only real help that we could have given was to maintain our work without him having to worry about us." said Gavin Knox, a junior.
With a substitute teacher monitoring, the students practiced and judged each other, giving pointers about voice inflection, tone, body positioning and, in some cases, fine-tuning the speech itself.
What: Top high school speakers from district tournaments across Oregon will competeat the state level.
Who: There will be 489 students, representing 66 high schools. Slightly more than last year.
Where: Western Oregon University in Monmouth
When: Starts Thursday with debate at 8:30 a.m.. Individual speeches begin Friday at 8 a.m. with semi-finals and finals for all events on Saturday starting at 8 a.m.
What's next: The winners in each school division are the state champions.
Source: Oregon School Activities Association
The team has won the state 5A division two years in a row, but the students don't expect a third championship this year. It's a rebuilding year, they said.Who: There will be 489 students, representing 66 high schools. Slightly more than last year.
Where: Western Oregon University in Monmouth
When: Starts Thursday with debate at 8:30 a.m.. Individual speeches begin Friday at 8 a.m. with semi-finals and finals for all events on Saturday starting at 8 a.m.
What's next: The winners in each school division are the state champions.
Source: Oregon School Activities Association
Still, 15 students qualified for the state tournament, which begins Thursday atWestern Oregon University in Monmouth.
The Silverton team will compete in multiple categories: Lincoln-Douglas debate, public forum debate, humorous interpretation, after dinner speaking, expository, radio commentary, dramatic interpretation, prose reading and student congress.
The school year got off to a rough start for Ogle. He learned in August that he would have a single speech and debate class rather than two, forcing him to cut more than a dozen of the 50 kids who signed up for the class.
Then, in November, his 5-year-old daughter caught the H1N1 virus. It started with a cough and fever and turned into pneumonia and a collapsed lung.
"It was frightening," Ogle said. Even the doctors didn't know if Laura would be OK. The girl's lung wasn't re-expanding as expected.
For 18 days, Ogle and his wife, Ginger, sat with their daughter, a tube in her chest, in an isolation unit at Doernbecher.
"When I was up there with my daughter, I just trusted that things were OK (at school)," Ogle said.
When he called, the substitute told him, "The kids are practicing. The (student) coaches are herding them and making sure they're doing what they need