Senior Sarah Sanders (Marion) took two first-place spots in Extemporaneous and Persuasion in the Bulldog Asynchronous Tournament hosted by Concordia University in Nebraska. The team took third place overall.
At the tournament, Sanders also took fifth in Prose. Senior Raechel Zoellick (Elk Grove Village) took second in After Dinner Speaking and second in Communication Analysis. Sophomore Jedge Slothower (Ottawa) won second in Persuasion and fifth in Impromptu, and also competed in Extemporaneous. Sophomore Michelle Ryan (Chicago Heights) took fourth in After Dinner Speaking, and also competed in Communication Analysis. Freshman Braden Wall (Cary) competed in Extemporaneous and Impromptu.
Each team member submitted recordings of their events to the tournament.
“It was a very interesting experience, especially since it was my first ever college tournament. I was definitely confused about some things but it eventually all got sorted out.”
Braden Wall, freshman
“I recorded my videos in the basement of fell,” said Sanders, “Recording a video instead of performing for an audience requires different skills… Conveying emotions to a camera can be a lot more difficult than conveying emotion to live audience members. Submitting videos does make it easier to compete though, especially when traveling becomes difficult because of school.”
“The good part about competing asynchronously is that I can retry for most of my events. The bad part is that I don’t get laugh feedback on my ADS so it’s really hard for one to determine if I’m doing good or not,” said Ryan, “I think the funniest thing that happened was when I said something completely wrong for my ADS and I had to re-record it since I couldn’t necessarily recover from it. It didn’t discourage me and I just enjoyed it so much!”
This was Wall’s first time competing in a college tournament.
“It was a very interesting experience, especially since it was my first ever college tournament. I was definitely confused about some things but it eventually all got sorted out,” said Wall, “One nice thing about competing asynchronously is that I can do it whenever I want and don’t have to worry about being in a time crunch, but I rely pretty heavily on the feedback from my audience in order to feel comfortable and confident in my speeches.”
The ISU Forensics Union, the oldest and most successful registered student organization on campus, boasts over 80 individual national champions and 10 team national championships. The team competes at tournaments in Lincoln-Douglas debate, public speaking, and oral interpretation events.