Lots of Winners at DSU Interp

It was a Saturday well spent for some 270 high school speakers at the 25th Karl E. Mundt Dakota Invitational Oral Interpretation Contest on the DSU campus. The weather cleared and the students had a gorgeous day for racing from building to building to deliver a wide variety of humorous, dramatic, and poetic readings to eager judges and competitors.

The team sweepstakes race was close in all three classes:

• In Class AA, perennial and passionate rivals Sioux Falls Lincoln and Sioux Falls O'Gorman fought to the end, placing 21 and 19 entrants in finals, respectively. Lincoln, coached by Bryan Hagg, came out on top, scoring 129 sweeps points, just 3 above the 126 earned by O'Gorman, led by coach Teresa Fester.
  
• Sioux Valley, coached by Barb Kleinjan and Sue Bassett, claimed the Class championship, outscoring Crystal Benning's Madison team by just 4 points, 83-79.
• Clark, under the guidance of coach Sherray hurlbert, led the surging Class B ranks, posting 79 sweepstakes points. They outpaced Jackie Fauth's Wolsey-Wessington team, which scored a respectable 68.
  

Sioux Falls Lincoln had four individual event champions: Elsa VandeVegte in Poetry, Michael McFarland in Oratory, Elliott Natz in Prose, and Pete Heidepriem and Kaitlin Dahlquist in Duet.

Sioux Falls O'Gorman claimed the remaining three individual event chamionships: Chloe Goldade won Humor, Andy Thuringer won Drama, and the team of Elizabeth Bunkers, Emalee Jorgenson, Matt Burkhart, Nick Sideras, and David Haney took first in Readers Theater.

This year's winners earned more than trophies and applause. For the tournament's silver anniversary, the DSU Foundation established the Karl E. Mundt Dakota Invitational Scholarships. Each of the individual winners received a $500 scholarship to Dakota State University. Each of the sweepstakes champion schools won a $750 DSU scholarship, to be awarded to one student on the champion team next spring.

A look at the complete results from Saturday's 28-school contest should give readers an idea of just how big and exciting an interp contest like the Dakota Invitational is. It's profoundly different from a basketball game where you put two teams in the court and tell them to go at it for an hour. During yesterday's contest, at any given time, there were 270 kids performing in 48 rooms all over campus in front of 48 judges. The kids do that three times -- some double-event and perform six times. Every kid competes: no one warms the bench or comes in just in the fourth quarter when the lead is out of reach. They don't have their coaches with them; the coaches are probably off judging other kids or helping calculate results at tournament headquarters. It's busy, it's crazy, and it's 100% fun.

Madison will host another big speech contest this winter, February 8 and 9, when the Karl E. Mundt Debate Tournament takes over Madison High School and the DSU campus. If you're interested in watching or even helping out, give Madison head debate coach and tournament director Renee Nills a shout. These speech contests are entertaining and educational events that Madison can be proud of.