Wessel, Treat qualify for nationals

After strong performances at the Wind River District Qualifier Forensics Tournament, two Carbon County School District No. 2 (CCSD#2) Speech and Debate Team members are headed to Nationals near Kansas City this summer.

Kaylyn Wessel and Becca Treat's second-place-winning duet ("My Sister's Keeper" by Jodi Picoult) was the national qualifier, and Wessel's individual drama ("January First" by Michael Schofield), which received fifth place, was the second alternate for nationals. The two Encampment K-12 School seniors will attend the National High School Speech and Debate Tournament in Overland Park, Kan. June 15-20.

Treat and Wessel will once again perform "My Sister's Keeper" at the national tournament. Treat said she was surprised by the outcome from the Wind River tournament, which took place at Central Wyoming College in Riverton Thursday through Saturday.

"We're the first Encampment kids to ever qualify for nationals in history," Treat said. "We technically took second in duet out of 30 duets total, and Kaylyn was the second alternative in drama. There were eight to 10 rounds, so we had to perform our duet eight to 10 times. Nobody else made it to finals, but a few made it past the first and second round."

Wessel said she is excited to meet and compete against participants from all 50 states. She said this year will mark the first time both she and Treat have attended the national tournament.

"For speech and debate, this was the first time that we've qualified for anything this big," Wessel said. "When it first happened it definitely took a long time to sink for both of us. We were both sitting on the bus staring at each other like, 'We're going to go to nationals!'"

There were 10 from the CCSD#2 team who competed at the district qualifier, including Nina Ford, Jacob Dickinson, Lydia Smith, Leam Engel, Gale Jackson, Nick Smith, Garrett Dale, Maya Zeiger, and around 30 competitors in each event. The team's coaches, Brenda Ostendorf and Gayle Wessel, also served as judges and evaluators and for various events and competitors.

Ford, a sophomore competing for her first year on the team, said she was proud of her performance over the weekend.

"I competed in Lincoln Douglas Debate, and my topic was 'Resolved: Placing Political Conditions on Humanitarian Aid to Foreign Countries is Unjust,'" she said. "I think I did pretty well making it to the fourth set of rounds, considering they eliminated half the people in the third and fourth rounds."

 

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