At the District National Qualifying Forensics Tournament held on April 15 and 16 at Hutchinson High School, the Great Bend High School Forensics Team took eight students and competed in 11 events. The Great Bend High School Forensics team had two members advance to semi-finals and another member advance to finals.
Sophomore Chase Pumford advanced to the top six in finals placing 6th in Humorous Interpretation. “NFL this year was a lot of fun,” said Pumford. “I achieved my own goal for the tournament to make it to finals and it was exciting to see Marissa and Michael make it to semi-finals. Next year I hope to continue to improve and qualify for the National Tournament. Right now I’m just getting ready for state.”
Freshmen Marissa Hoisington and Michael Gieck advanced to the top 12 in semi-finals placing 11th in Duo Interpretation.
Freshman Marissa Hoisington also made it to semi-finals in Humorous Interpretation and placed 10th. “The NFL tournament was a lot of fun and different than other tournaments.” Said Hoisington, “I’m super proud I made it to semi-finals in both of my events as a freshman.”
The Great Bend Forensics Team also won the District National Bruno E. Jacobs traveling sweepstakes trophy. Over the past six years, the team has accumulated over 1,000 NFL points from District and National Tournaments. This is the third time for the Great Bend Chapter to win this award. There is only one other school that has won this award three times in our District NFL League. After a chapter wins the Bruno E. Jacobs award, their points go back down to zero and they have to work back up to win the award again.
On May 7, the Great Bend Forensics Team will travel to Topeka for the State Championship Tournament. This year the team qualified 16 events to state, a full entry, compared with four entries from the previous year. “I think our team has done a great job this year, especially considering that we have so many first year students on the squad,” says GBHS Forensics Coach Barbara Watson. “Many have qualified two or more events for state. I am very impressed when you look back at last year’s four entries to this year’s 16 entries, you can see that is a huge accomplishment. Everyone on the team still seems very enthused and represented our school well at the West Kansas NFL Tournament and I expect that to continue at the 5A State Speech Championship Tournament.”