The Northwestern University Speech Team won the national championship in its division at the National Forensic Association tournament last Monday. Five of the 13 NU students in the competition were also named national finalists in various events.
After the five-day tournament at Ohio University, NU was declared the overall winner of Division I, which is reserved for schools that enter fewer than 30 to 40 students. Weinberg senior Priyanka Gupta, Communication junior Joshua Hiew, Weinberg junior Hanchen Wang and Communication senior Grace Rojek all competed in the finals of at least one event.
Each member of the NU team had to qualify for the tournament by placing in the final round of a regular season competition. Students competed in multiple events at nationals, ranging from extemporaneous speaking to after-dinner speaking.
The victory was NU’s fourth consecutive Division I national title, a feat that only one other school, Ohio’s Miami University, has been able to match. Ryan Lauth, a lecturer in the School of Communication and the team’s head coach, said the NU speakers had trained anywhere from “five to 20 hours per week” in the month leading up to the competition.
“There were other teams who were threats,” said Lauth, who mentioned Western Kentucky University and Bradley University as two of NU’s biggest competitors. “But in the end we pulled it out.”
Gupta, who will graduate after four years as a member of the speech team, placed third overall for extemporaneous speaking, which requires students to speak on a topic with very little time to prepare. In the final round, she was asked to discuss possible solutions to border disputes between China and the Philippines.
“It is actually not my favorite event, so I was surprised,” Gupta said. “There is a lot of timing and luck involved with speaking. Sometimes the cards line up and sometimes they don’t, but I gained a lot more experience in extemp(oraneous speaking) at that tournament.”
After completing her final tournament as a member of the speech team, Gupta spoke warmly of the organization, calling it “the best thing I have done at Northwestern.”
Hiew qualified for the final round in extemporaneous speaking as well as impromptu speaking, which allows the speaker less than two minutes to prepare their argument. He was named the Division I national champion in both events, although Wang followed him closely in impromptu speaking, finishing second overall.
“We have a pretty small team of about 13 or 14 people,” said Hiew, who will leave the team early in order to graduate over the summer. “You get learning and you get competition, but you also get family. I love the fact that we are always helping each other and always encouraging each other.”
NU speakers also ventured outside of impromptu and extemporaneous speaking. Rojek placed sixth overall in after-dinner speaking, an event that she said relies heavily on humor. She delivered her final speech on online dating.
“Basically the whole point is getting people to laugh,” Rojek said.”There were a lot of returning title-holders, but it was a great experience for me because I got to compete against the best of the best.”
Although the competitive season is over, Lauth said the NU team will host a national speech tournament for high school students later in the year.
