The Power of Speech: Season Outlook of Glenbard West’s Forensics Team

“My goal is for every person on Glenbard West’s Forensics team to leave this season more confident with themselves, and both well equipped and eager to articulate their message to others, whatever it may be. There is so much happening today and it is so important for young people to be able to contribute to these global conversations.  Our speech season does end in February, but I’d love to know that the skill sets our speech team develops now will be with them for a very long time.” – Lizzy Bassett, Forensics Team Captain 

Forensics: Science or speech? Some people might not even know what the word means. Although it does relate to both criminology and DNA, at Glenbard West, the Forensics Team is our very own speech team. Encompassing such a wide smorgasbord of events and types of speech, from comedy to acting and public events, the Forensics Team offers and provides a wide range of talents, topics, and notable personnel.

Together, each member of the team competes in individual events in a series of 3 to 4 rounds. In these rounds, 6 or more individuals compete in the same styled round, vying for the top spot. The judge deems each competitor a rank, 1-6, with 1 being the best, and 6 with the most room to grow.

With each round going by, the top few individuals “break to finals.” There, any ties are settled in a final round. Eventually, an individual is selected as 1st in their event in the tournament, 2nd and so on based on their specific rank per round.

Overall, the scores are added up for all individuals of each team and each team will receive an individual team score.

To learn more about the progress of our team this year and their goals for the remainder of the season, I spoke with captain Lizzy Bassett, board member Samra Haseeb, and team member Lauren Alcock.

As team captain, Lizzy had lots to address about how the season has been going thus far. Noting the uncharted waters of this season, Lizzy said, “Going into this season, no one really knew what was going to happen because there have been so many changes; half the team is novices now, we’re organizing our weeks differently with coachings, and we just left last season with a lot of success. So our season began with a lot of enthusiasm from everyone to try new events and expand our comfort zone in order to really grow as much as possible.”

 Samra stated, “The season has been super great so far. We’re about halfway through and in full intensity mode, which can be stressful at times, but the good kind of stress that pushes you to be better and better.” With the amazing enthusiasm and gusto at this point in the season, the Forensics team is in the full-swing of things.

While asked how the season has been going so far, Lauren noted the detrimental loss of the seniors. Lauren said, “As a team, the season started out a little bit rough since losing our seniors, but we’re back in the swing of things.” Lauren also stated she was excited to find her events for the season and what she will focus on in competition.

Speaking of these “events,” each member explained their roles in these specific areas of speech.

Lauren is in the events Oratorical Declamation and Special Occasion Speaking, noted by the abbreviations Dec and SOS.  Lauren explained that Dec is when the speaker “find[s] and cut[s] a speech given by someone else and interpret[s] it in [their] own way.” SOS is the event in which one gives “a persuasive speech with a casual audience.”

Lizzy went on to clarify that her events are Poetry (Poe) and Dramatic Interpretation (DI). While Poetry is rather self explanatory, delivering a poem of some sort, Dramatic Interpretation is a tad more complex. Lizzy stated that it is an acting event focused on a serious topic, appealing toward the emotions and lacking humor or satire (the complete antithesis to Dramatic Interpretation (DI) is another Forensics event known as Humorous Interpretation (HI)).

Although Lizzy is no stranger to Forensics, she is new to Dramatic Interpretation (DI). She expressed that “DI is very new for me, so I’m excited to explore all the nuances that comes with this sort of acting.”

Similarly to Lauren, Samra is also in SOS and Dec Samra went into a bit more depth about these two events. “SOS entails writing an 8 minute speech about a problem you observe in society today. The speech is directed to an audience of your choice, and includes added humor to further emphasize our points.”  Samra added, “Dec, on the other hand, is an 8 minute delivery of a professionally written and published speech or article—the author is someone other than you.”

This season so far, the team has had its up’s and down’s, as Samra notes that they “lost a large amount of our team after 20 seniors graduated last year, but thankfully we have taken in lots of new and eager competitors this year and it’s been really fun.”

Most notably, this past Saturday the team placed third in the Elk Grove Invitational Tournament. 

With the variability in performance at tournaments, Lizzy noted that “every tournament is different. There are ones West usually does well at, in terms of breaking into finals and placing, and ones that are more challenging. Before the long break we were faced with one of those tournaments that are more challenging for West, and unfortunately this year it was no exception.”

With the remainder of the season unfolding and the end of the season nearing IHSA State Finals, these three Forensics members had lots to say about their goals for these last few tournaments.

Samra stated that “[m]y goals for the remainder of the season are to just keep working and progressing in my performances. Because I am a senior and this is my last season on the team, I want to make it as memorable as possible—which has definitely been a successful goal thus far.” Samra expressed not only how she cherished her individual experiences at tournaments but the camaraderie that forms among the whole Forensics team.

Lauren discussed how she hopes to “to get better at the events I do by listening to more feedback from others” and place better each and every tournament.

Finally, team captain Lizzy had lots of guiding words, not only for herself but for the whole team, and said, “Competitively, I would love to see all of my teammates continue to keep breaking into finals and see their personal scores improve even as the tournaments get tougher.” She also focused on the idea of getting a set roster for the State Series as the regular season comes to a close.

In queue with her role as one of the leaders, Lizzy conveyed that she hoped the best for each and every member of the team and said, “My goal is for every person on Glenbard West’s Forensics team to leave this season more confident with themselves, and both well equipped and eager to articulate their message to others, whatever it may be. There is so much happening today and it is so important for young people to be able to contribute to these global conversations.  Our speech season does end in February but I’d love to know that the skill sets our speech team develops now will be with them for a very long time.”

Good luck to the entire Forensics team in the remainder of their season! Go West!