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Talkin' Tigers place at local tournament
by Brian S. Orban
Mountain Home News
Following an award-winning night Friday evening, Mountain Home High School's Talkin' Tigers went on to place fourth during the state's largest gathering of motivational speakers.
Held at the high school here, the U-Bus-2-Us speech and debate tournament hosted more than 400 students representing schools across southern Idaho.
Billed as the state's largest event in 2012, attendance numbers this year slipped a bit with budget cuts in some school districts prompting a few teams to bow out of this year's competition.
Eva Nevins, a sophomore from Meridian High School, was among the hundreds of students that visited Mountain Home over the weekend.
"I like to argue. It'll help me more in life if I know how to argue my points," said Nevins, who specializes in the Lincoln-Douglas style of debate.
Meridian High School had nearly two dozen students entered at this year's U-Bus-2-Us tournament.
"It's the will of the kids," said Meridian coach Ty Polidori. "They want to have fun, and this is their form of having fun."
Celebrating its sixth year here, the two-day event started Friday afternoon a variety of public speaking events followed by a full day of debate-based discussions on Saturday.
Tyler Gordon, a freshman from Eagle High School, was one of many students preparing for Friday's dramatic interpretation competition. During each round, students in this event recite excerpts from various stage plays, playing out the roles of different personas by changing the tone in their voices as well as their body gestures when switching from one character to the next.
Gordon was encouraged to join his school's speech and debate team at the urging of his brother, who spent four years on the Eagle squad.
"He loved debate, and I remember watching him doing it," Gordon said. "I was amazed just how much work goes into preparing for a debate."
Overall, the nationally ranked Talkin' Tigers finished fourth with their arch rivals from Eagle High School claiming their second consecutive U-Bus-2-Us championship. Renaissance High School and Mountain View High School rounded out the top three in the overall sweepstakes.
In Friday's speech events, Talkin' Tigers' team captain Brandon Sams topped the pack in the original oratory category. Krystin Benson earned Mountain Home's second first-place trophy in the retold story event while Jeremy Cruz finished first in radio speaking.
Mountain Home's prowess in debate lead to a pair of first-place awards with Matt McLean and Dixon Kean topping the competition during Saturday's student congress events.
With Mountain Home centrally located between the Treasure Valley and Magic Valley, the event gives some schools on both sides of the state a chance to compete against one another, according to coaches representing these teams.
With the event continuing to grow each year, the U-Bus-2-Us competition outgrew its former location at the junior high school, according to John Petti, who coaches the Mountain Home team. As in previous years, this weekend's competition filled many of the high school's available classrooms.
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," he said. "That's kind of tough."