The Lower Columbia College Fighting Smelt Speech and Debate Team won 2nd place in overall team sweepstakes and was the top community college at the Clark and Rae Peters Invitational tournament hosted by Pacific University. This result placed LCC above a number of top four-year colleges and universities, including Lewis and Clark College, the University of Washington, and Oregon State University.
This is the second consecutive tournament where LCC has finished as the best community college program.
Damien Lucero earned the most sweepstakes among the Fighting Smelt competitors. He was the champion of editorial commentary, the runner up in open impromptu speaking, and finished third in open extemporaneous speaking.
Divaa Nchau finished as the runner up in both prose interpretation and persuasive speaking, as well as third place in editorial commentary.
Aiden Tran finished second in after dinner speaking, third in open impromptu speaking, and won bronze in open IPDA debate.
Jonah Martin finished fifth in novice impromptu speaking and won bronze in novice IPDA debate.
Alex White finished fourth in novice extemporaneous speaking and won bronze in novice IPDA debate.
Izzy Whiton, Jared Doherty, and Aurora McCoy also advanced to elimination rounds.
Also representing LCC at the Peters Invitational were Kaysen Kruckenberg and Izabelle White.
The Fighting Smelt were coached by Lower Columbia College alumni Mara Slabu, Vickey Chen, and Erika Hein, as well as LCC faculty Alex Brehm, Larissa Arnold, and Kailie Drumm.
Next up for LCC Speech and Debate is the Mahaffey Memorial Tournament hosted by Linfield University the weekend of November 13th -15th . 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