Speech and Debate goes to Europe

The Pacific University Speech and Debate team will travel to Vienna, Austria for the International Forensics Association Tournament Friday, March 11.

Pacific’s Speech and Debate team resides in the media department and has traveled both nationally and internationally, bringing home awards and trophies from nearly all of the tournaments it travels to compete in.

Head Coach Dan Broyles recently won the Coaches Educators Award for the Northwest Conference.

The award was given to Broyles for his contributions to the speech and debate community.

“I was flattered, tickled and a little surprised after being called up to accept the award,” Broyles said.

Broyles and his assistant coach give a lot of time to the team members and the time spent shows with the teams success. Senior Chelsea Hill said that a lot of the success is due to the coaches and their devotion to the team.

With all the success the team has had, winning national and international tournaments, Hill said unfortunately not too many students even know there is a speech and debate team, let alone the awards it has won.

“It’s not just a Pacific thing, I think in general people don’t really know about speech and debate,” Senior Chelsea Hill said.

Hill said that while the Speech and Debate team revels in their individuality they wish that they were more recognized in schools.

Hill said that without the recognition they cannot get the funding they need to be able to go on these trips to other countries to compete in international competitions.

Speech and debate is built upon many different events that include individual events such as speeches and then the classic debate style between two teams.

A little known fact about the Speech and Debate team is that scholarships are available through Pacific to students who compete on the team.

The Speech and Debate team competes in many tournaments across the world, including everywhere from Corvallis all the way to different countries.

Junior Winsvey Campos said that when the team goes to Washington D.C, the competition is amazing because they are given the opportunity to compete with teams from the East Coast.

Every year, some of the members of the Speech and Debate team gets a chance to travel abroad for an international conference.

Students compete and travel and sight-see in their respective areas.