Muskingum News

Thursday, March 18, 2021, through Sunday, March 21, 2021, three Muskingum students and two Muskingum judges entered a virtual world of forensics competition between seventy-nine colleges and universities in the U.S. and five hundred twenty (520) student participants in two time zones. The NCT, or National Comprehensive Tournament, hosted by the intercollegiate speech honorary Pi Kappa Delta offered synchronous (live) and asynchronous (recorded) rounds of competition remotely in seventeen different types of public speaking, performance, and debate events through a combination of virtual speaking platforms:  Yaatly, Speechwire.com, and Live@speechwire.com

The People: The Muskingum Forensics program, directed by Assistant Professor of Communication, Media and Theatre Rachel Pollock and assisted by Reverend Tim Pollock, part-time instructor of Communication, Media and Theatre and full-time pastor of Bloomfield Church, competed in a combined total of eight individual events at the tournament:  

• Elizabeth Nease, a third-year varsity member, Spanish and Theater major studying remotely from her home in Pomeroy, competed in persuasive, informative, and Spanish literature interpretation.   
• Taylor Blakeman, a first-year nursing student, competed in impromptu, interviewing, after dinner speaking, and dramatic duo  (duo partner Alyssa Taylor). 
• Alyssa Taylor, a second-year Education and Special Education major, in addition to dramatic duo (partner Taylor Blakeman), also competed in informative speaking and poetry interpretation. 

The Process: Tournament rigor was demanding. National competition in all academic events began Thursday 10:00 PST/1:00 EST during classes and continued through Sunday evening.  Two preliminary rounds lasted long into the evening, running as late as midnight on Friday.  Because the tournament was classified as virtual hybrid, students sent in a youtube link to a recorded version for each individual event to be judged as their second preliminary round. For Interviewing, students also sent in a google doc link to their resume.  

Challenges at the virtual tournament were real. From multiple time zones, students and judges toggled between Speechwire.com for schedules, schematics, and postings and the Yaatly platform, where participants entered and checked into a virtual “competition room” with five or six student competitors and one to five judges. Students presented events in diverse remote spaces ranging from their bedrooms, living rooms, attics, and garages to team practice rooms before trophy cases and classrooms or auditoriums. When connections were lost, screens froze, or audio did not synch, participants exited the virtual space and sought help from a remote help team of Pi Kappa Delta volunteers on the Event Chat or Help Desk. 

Live timed limited preparation speaking events like Impromptu speaking and partnered speech events like Duo posed a particular challenge. For instance, Impromptu judges initiated a “topic draw” for the individualized speaking prompt on their speechwire.com virtual ballot which impromptu students then retrieved at speechwire.com before re-entering the virtual competition space to prep on camera.  To accommodate COVID 19 safety protocol, students in Dramatic Duo could not perform in the same physical space but instead had to present virtually/synchronously from separate physical rooms.  

The Outcome:   

• Elizabeth Nease ranked  55 of 88 in Informative Speaking,  68 of 86 in Persuasive Speaking, and 10 of 18 in Spanish Literature Interpretation.  

Nease presented her Persuasive speech “Fighting Monolingualism in the U.S.” last Thursday, March 11, 2021, to much acclaim from the Muskingum community at the Speaking Globally Panel: Real Stories hosted by Arts & Humanities Division, World Languages, Special Events, and Forensics.  

Top scorer:  Ranked 10th in the nation. Nease’s wildcard event, Spanish Literature Interpretation, presented entirely in Spanish with original Spanish introduction before Spanish-speaking judges, consisted of poetry from the book Saudade (Sorrow) by Clarabel Alegria, ed. by Carolyn Forche.

• Blakeman ranked  86 of 145 in Varsity Impromptu, 62  of 65 in Varsity After Dinner Speaking, 108 of 129 in Varsity Interviewing, and 21 of 24 in Varsity Dramatic Duo. 
• Taylor ranked 51 of 56 in Varsity Poetry, 76 of 88 in Informative Speaking, and 21 of 24 in Varsity Dramatic Duo. 

More To Come:  
Additional top score was earned by Blakeman/Taylor with their Varsity Dramatic Duo. Dramatic Duo (currently ranked 21 in the U.S.) Taylor Blakeman and Alyssa Taylor will present their ten-minute program “What the Constitution Means To Me” by Heidi Shreck at the Celebration of Women in the Arts Live on Orbit Media this Thursday March 25, 2021, at 7 p.m.