Record turnout expected for local debate tourney

Lincoln-Douglas Debate is just one of the competitions scheduled at this week's U-Bus-2-Us speech tournament at Mountain Home High School.

Nineteen schools, 490 students and counting...

With one day to go, Mountain Home High School expects to shatter previous attendance figures as it prepares to host one of the state's biggest gathering of motivational speakers.

The high school's annual U-Bus-To-Us speech and debate tournament continues to grow as schools from as far as Twin Falls sign up.

"It will be the largest speech and debate competition ever held in Mountain Home ... and one of the largest in the state," said John Petti, who coaches the school's Talkin' Tigers squad.

Events run from 2-8 p.m. Friday and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday.

Petti expects up to six more schools to reserve seats at the tournament, bringing the expected attendance figures to more than 550 students representing 25 schools across the region. Last year, Mountain Home hosted 18 schools.

Celebrating its third year here, the U-Bus-2-Us event outgrew its former location at the junior high school. Petti expects this year's competition to fill the high school's available classrooms, including the 13 temporary buildings added last fall to accommodate its new freshmen class.

"The thing's that's saving us is those portable classrooms," he said. "That allowed us to expand our tournament a bit."

This week's event comes on the heels of the Talkin' Tigers' sweep of three main awards at the Inaugural Northwest Nazarene and Boise State Treasure Valley Speech and Debate Tournament in January. Mountain Home claimed 15 of 24 speech events to earn 144 points at the event -- 87 points ahead of its closest rivals from Rocky Mountain High School.

However, Petti expects strong performances from schools like its arch rivals from Eagle and Bishop Kelly with smaller schools in Filer, Hailey and Weiser promising to give the Tigers a run for the gold.

This year's Tiger squad features 30 first-year novices with 40 more representing the Tigers' veteran competitors. People like Raif Armstrong joined the Talkin' Tigers four years ago when the ninth grade competitors were still in the junior high school complex and the Tigers were still in their infancy.

"I joined debate because I like to argue; I'm pretty good at it," he said.

With plans to enter law school after graduating, Armstrong's exposure to the debate format gives him some advantages over those lacking this form of persuasion. It also helps him during other classes.

"In government class, I have a lot easier time understanding the issues versus other kids in the class," he said. Looking at the complexities of political commentaries or cartoons, he understands the nature of the often-controversial subjects, while other students have just a basic working knowledge of these issues, the senior added.

Ranked 81st in the nation at the start of the school year, Mountain Home continues to rise in the standings based on the team's size and level of success. Last week, the team moved up to 36th nationwide.

"It just means that we have a large squad, our kids do well and that we're a well-rounded team," Petti said.

But what makes the Talkin' Tigers an award-winning team? It all comes down to good kids, Petti said.

"One of the things we do is to not put a lot of pressure on winning," the coach added. "We don't worry about win and loss records. We just try to have fun."

Eliminating the stress of winning tends to motivate Petti's students to take the initiative to compete and hone their skills in different forms of motivational speaking, literary interpretation and debate.

With 13 previous tournaments since the school year began, the Mountain Home event represents the last of the season's invitational competitions leading up to the district and state speech and debate championships. Petti figures this encouraged this year's expected record turnout here.

Canyon Ridge High School in Twin Falls, along with competitors from Wood River in Hailey, are among the schools expected to make the roughly two-hour trip to Mountain Home this year.

"That's why we're so excited about this tournament ... we've got almost every team here in southwestern Idaho (coming)," he said.

The two-day event features 13 individual speech categories along with three different styles of debate and a student congress event.

One time a year, the U-Bus-2-Us event gives the Mountain Home squad "home field advantage," according to Petti, who developed the tournament's unusual name.

During the rest of each season, the Talkin' Tigers travel at least 50 miles to reach the nearest high school to compete, the coach added. "That means every time we compete in a tournament, we have to go 100 miles round trip per day. That's kind of tough."

With so many students expected this year, the Talkin' Tigers recently made an urgent request for judges to grade the competitors.

"I'm very fortunate this year that some parents who work at the Air Force base have recruited me a ton of Air Force judges," Petti said. "I cannot tell you how important those judges are to me."

Other schools unable to provide a sufficient number of their own judges must pay $50 per judge to make up for this shortage.

"When someone volunteers to judge, it's basically like giving a $50 donation to the debate team because the other schools have to pay for not having enough judges and our volunteers fill in," Petti said.

No experience is necessary for people interested in judging. A judging clinic begins at 6 p.m. Thursday in Room D at the school to help these volunteers prepare for the tournament.

In addition to ranking the performance of each competitor, judges provide feedback to highlight each student's strengths and weaknesses.

"To be a good judge, you really need one thing: an open mind," Petti said. "You need to listen to what the students have to say and then judge who you felt did a better job persuading you to their side."

With 19 schools and 490 students -- and counting -- that equals a lot of persuasion.

Meet the Talkin' Tigers

SENIORS -- Raif Armstrong, Chasity Custer, Miriam A. Forrest, Danielle Lord, Arrianna Montgomery, Amanda Raines, Rebecca Smith, Robert Welle and Patricia Wade

JUNIORS -- Chase Bennett, Jessica Bott, Natalie Campbell, Samantha Dovell, Linzi B. Dudding, Jarred Gales, Cody Hardwick, Melodie Lettkeman, Rodrigo Main, Ryan Pennington, Laura Porter, Jessica Richelieu, Erika Sabol, Jessica Tindall and Chelsea Wegrzyniak

SOPHOMORES -- Marissa Aiken, Levon Braatz, Alyssa Cannavo, Kylie L. Cheatham, Anthony Ciotti-Lucas, Nick Duvall, Victoria Ferguson, Samantha Fugit, Hannah Holland, Andrew Hoskins, Ronald Hurley, Stephanie Jewell, Matthew Kelly, Joann King, Amanda Klitzke, Jenna Knutson, Christian Lam, Betsy Lynn, Elijah Nixon, Megan Porter, Katie Siira, Calebb Traylor, Christina Trouten and Madison Wallace

FRESHMEN -- Coby Bobzien, Natalie Bush, Jonathan Dodge, Jamie Doyle, Matthew Hufft, Morgan Lehto, Austin Lucas, December Marley, San Juana Martinez, James McGovern, C. Christina Miracle, Dylon Nute, Dustin Paille, Mathew Patterson, Destiny Rose, Matthew Rueger, Matthew Ryan, Brandon Sams, Joshua Saporta, Alexandra Steadman, Mikala Teague, Juan Torres and Doug Watkins