Sarah Varnadoe, staff writer

Over spring break, the Berry College Forensics Union competed in the Novice Nationals at Butler University in Indianapolis. The competition lasted three days, and competitors were all students in their first year of intercollegiate competition. Berry had nine competitors and placed in multiple parts of the 11 events as well as one of the nontraditional events at the competition. Nontraditional events consist of impromptu sales, public narrative and slam poetry.

It was only the team’s second time traveling to competition in two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Nationals was in person again, it was smaller than normal with only 10 schools competing. The team was elated to be back to competing in person. According to Assistant Director of Forensics Hope Willoughby, the directors expressed this excitement and discussed how important coming together is for the team.

“It felt great to be back in person, not only for the competitive aspect of it and the educational aspect of it for the students, but also because traveling is so important for establishing team culture,” Willoughby said.

During the two years that all forensics activities were online, the Berry team did not compete much. Both the team and its directors conveyed a distaste for the online competition environment and how different it was from competing in person. As such, they decided to do fairly little online activity, keeping mostly to interteam scrimmages. Director of Forensics Matthew Delzer went into the reasoning behind the decision.

“Most of the activities switched to online,” Delzer said. “We’ve done a little of it, and our students were pretty clear that they don’t enjoy it as much. It’s not as educational an experience, so they elected not to [compete online].”

Even with Novice Nationals being one of the first competitions back in person, the two directors did not express nervousness on behalf of the team. 

“I was confident in our team,” Willoughby said. “We’ve got a really good group of novices.”

National Champion sophmore Ellie Perkins, a communications major who competed in three events, was still a bit nervous, although she enjoys public speaking and found the experience rewarding. 

“Performing is a lot of fun,” Perkins said. “There’s nothing better than being able to get up in front of people and speak and feel accomplished. Seeing your speech go from where it started out versus where you ended up with that speech, there’s such a big difference and it changes so much over the course of the year. Relating your final performance to your first performance is rewarding.”

The team continued its strong legacy and set new records for Berry with five individual national champions. In the After Dinner Speaking event, junior Sara Blakely, placed as national champ, and freshman Karina Perez and freshman Melissa Wright took fifth and sixth place. In Informative Speaking, Ellie Perkins was the national champion and freshman Brittany Lince followed in second. In the International Public Debate Association (IPDA), senior Kalista Shields was both the national champion speaker and a national semifinalist. Blakely took national champion in a second category: Program Oral Interpretation. Lince followed in second. Lince was Berry’s final national champion, winning in the Prose Interpretation event. Perkins was second and freshman Hannah Boler placed fourth. 

The team continued to place in more events. In Persuasive Speaking, Boler placed fifth, followed by Kyle Lowe in sixth. Boler also took second in Public Narrative, with Lince and Perkins in fifth and sixth. In Rhetorical Criticism, junior Nolan Davidson placed third. 

The Individual Sweepstakes category consists of the top overall speakers at the tournament. One Berry student, Lince, placed third. The team as a whole placed second in the Team Sweepstakes.

The team and directors were all very proud of their performance, something that could be heard in their voices. 

“I’m so proud of them,” Willoughby said. “They did a great job.”

The team has more upcoming competitions in April, including the league championship and interstate oratory.