prep's speech team

Five Falcons reached the final round at the Valley Christian Speech Tournament and secured a place in the State
Finals for the Prep's Speech Team in North Pointe's first year competing.

The Prep had 10 students competing in categories ranging from Partnered Duo-Interpretation to Serious Prose
Interpretation. For the first time in the school's history the team had 5 students advance to final rounds. As a result
of the points earned as a team because of this difficult feat, the Speech Team has now qualified for the State
competition.

At the Dobson High Speech Tournament the Speech Team amazed everyone by having two students advance to the
semi-final rounds and ended the tournament 16th out of 32 schools. This time around the Prep placed 5th out of 22
competing schools.

Students who place in the final rounds at these tournaments earn major additional points and win trophies and
ribbons as well as the respect of fellow competitors. Michael Denham, who broke into finals in two different
categories, took a 6th place in Original Oratory and a 6th place in Duo-Interpretation. His partner for
Duo-Interpretation Nichole Foster also earned a 6th place ranking. Chris Dalpe earned a 4th place ranking in
Duo-Interpretation and his partner Frankie Marchi earned 4th place in the category of Duo-Interpretation as well.

This year's State competition is being held at Riverside High School, just outside of Needles California on March 14th
and 15th. This is the first time the Prep has ever qualified for the state competition and the team has one more
tournament to attend before this to hone their skills and continue with their practice.

"I just didn't even consider we would be able to make it to State this year," says Mr. Ward, the team's Head Coach.
"I would have been happy just to do what we've done here. We have never even had one person break into finals
and to have five is mind boggling. But to qualify for State on top of it all is almost too much."

"When I was checking over the numbers and then confirmed them with the tournament director though," continued
Coach Ward, "I realized that because we had so many kids qualify in the final rounds that our points earned due to
this would put us over the top. I have to be honest, I got choked up. We are still such a young team and every
tournament we attend we do better than the last time. But to be able to already qualify to go to the State competition
in just our second year is too much for me to wrap my head around," said Coach Ward.

Asked what this accomplishment means to the team Coach Ward responded, "Well this gives us some validation.
People don't understand that our team begins putting hours and hours worth or work into their interpretation pieces
in the summer before the school year starts. We work almost every day after school on these and then attend these
tournaments on the weekends. And the hard part is that we don't have a specific season that starts and stops at a
certain time. Our season for Speech and Debate goes all year long. All this work has now paid off though and we're
going to State!".

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