Forensics team places 5th in state competition, Clarion Staff Writer
Dennis Ottosen, Clarion Staff Writer
Issue date: 3/11/09 Section: News
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The two-day event was held at UW Stout, in Menomonie, Wis. Three students represented MATC at the event: Spencer White, Lisa Patterson and Nick Camp. Coach Patti Huber, assistant coach Stan Johnson, and another forensic coach, Steve Salmon, accompanied them.
There are 11 different events in forensics including stories, poetry, dramatic pieces and speeches. About half of these categories deal with public speaking and the other half usually involves performances, either single or duo.
At the state tournament MATC competed in three different events; dramatic interpretation, prose reading, and program oral interpretation. Each event was comprised of three rounds, in each round MATC students competed against five different participants, making a total of about 15 competitors in each event.
Spencer White did a dramatic interpretation; for his piece he chose to do a part from the dramatic play "Bums." One component of forensics is that it tries to raise people's awareness about different issues going on in the world today. The idea behind Spencer's piece was to point out the high percentage of people that are homeless, showing that this is a real problem; many people are only one check away from being homeless in today's society. This was Spencer's first collegiate meet and he did an amazing job, he ended up taking home the fifth place trophy for his splendid performance.
The other team members from MATC also did great. Lisa Patterson participated in a reading prose and a Program Oral Interpretation (POI) with the inspiration behind her performance being 'acceptance.' Her prose reading was called "Ghost Girl," a part taken from a novel by Torey L. Hayden. She also took part in the POI event that concentrated on the theme of walking a mile in someone else's shoes. For this she performed song lyrics from "It's Not Easy Being Green," by Kermit the Frog, in addition she read book lyrics from Elphaba in the story "Wicked." Elphaba is the name given to the wicked witch of the West from the "Wizard of OZ."
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