The Lower Columbia College Fighting Smelt Speech and Debate Team won 2 nd place in overall team sweepstakes and was the top community college at the McPherson Classic tournament hosted by Whitworth University. This result placed LCC above a number of top four-year colleges and universities, including Lewis and Clark College, Carroll College, University of Montana, and Oregon State University.
This is the second consecutive tournament where LCC has finished as the best community college and among the top three overall programs.
Mara Slabu continued her remarkable season by finishing third place in individual sweepstakes. Slabu finished second in informative speaking, second in persuasive speaking, third in communication analysis, sixth in extemporaneous speaking, and was a semifinalist in open IPDA debate.
Kamren Mattison was the best novice-level competitor at the tournament. Mattison impressively won both persuasive speaking and impromptu speaking unanimously with perfect rankings. He also finished sixth in novice editorial commentary and was a quarterfinalist in novice IPDA debate.
Aiden Tran was the champion of novice editorial commentary and finished third in novice informative speaking.
Divaa Nchau was the champion of novice prose interpretation and was named fifth speaker in novice IPDA debate.
Ethan Cooper, Rayelynn Camp, Vickey Chen, Damien Lucero, and Ameera Vandolah also represented Lower Columbia College at the tournament and earned several additional individual awards.
Next up for LCC Speech and Debate is the Mahaffey Memorial Tournament hosted by Linfield College the weekend of November 14th-16th. This is a brutally competitive Northwest Forensics Conference Designated Tournament, but the Fighting Smelt look like they are up to the challenge.
Contact:
Alex Brehm
Director of Forensics
Communication Studies Instructor
Lower Columbia College
abrehm@lowercolumbia.edu
(360) 442-2670