In its inaugural year, the Rossford High School speech and debate team has two students qualifying for state competition.

Junior Xavier Stiles and freshman Aidan Heaton earned the right to move to the state level after placing at the district competition February 6.

This achievement was no small feat, considering until this year, RHS never had a team.

Last spring Xavier, an honor student, wanted to start a speech and debate team. He contacted Shelley Bertsch, library and media specialist to find what needed to be done.

Ms. Bertsch agreed to advise the group–admitting at that time, she had no idea what she was getting into.

“It’s very time consuming, but it’s really worth it, to see their pieces come together,” she explained. “All of the students lacked some confidence and poise. It was just great to see them grow in that way.”

The team began with 13 interested students in October. But given the amount of time and research involved, that eventually became three ambitious students.

With the third being Taryn Rodriguez, also a freshman, they met two days each week after school.

“They were always receptive to criticism and feedback,” Ms. Bertsch said.

Xavier and Aidan competed in the same category, Informative, where participants inform the audience about any topic of their choice. The 10-minute piece must be memorized for competitions.

The top eight competitors advance to the state level, which will be March 3 to 6.

Xavier delivered a speech titled “Introverts in the Modern World” while Aidan spoke on “Multi-Tasking and the Need to Slow Down.”

They finished third and eighth in the competition, respectively.

Taryn competed in a category called Oral Interpretation, where she had to piece together a speech using the words of other authors, a challenging category that Ms. Bertsch said relies heavily on a student’s creativity.

Even though Taryn did not qualify for state, she reached the finals at district with her presentation.

The competition this year was trying for the students. Due to the pandemic, live audiences were not permitted, so all competitions were conducted online via a format similar to Zoom that was started by the National Speech and Debate Association.

“You don’t even have the opportunity to see the audience and hear their reactions,” Ms. Bertsch noted.

For the competition format, all participants competed in the Toledo district, which featured 15 teams from northwest Ohio.

Each competitor chooses from 13 categories of speech styles and four styles of debate. They delivered their piece twice to earn advancement to the finals. They then delivered it once more to see if they qualified for state.

In case of a tie, a competitor might be asked to deliver it a fourth time.

Coaches of various teams served as judges for the event; however, a coach could not judge in the area in which their students were competing.

Additional judges not connected to the teams also rated the competitors.

The top eight participants in each category earned the right to move up. Ms. Bertsch admits that

Ms. Bertsch admits that beginning the program was not easy.

“We had an uphill climb to begin with,” she acknowledged. “For one, we had to find funding. We applied for a grant to get our team fees waived. Then, we had to pay fees for each student per competition.”

Ms. Bertsch personally paid the students’ competition fees out of her pocket. She has since learned that the school will pay their way going forward.

“While we were waiting for fees to be completed, other schools were already competing,” she said.

The team’s first competition was on January 30, just one week before districts.

They also encountered some struggles with technology issues.

“It took a real team effort to resolve those issues,” said Bertsch, who thanked Sandy Smith, district technology director, for her help.

Ms. Bertsch is very proud of the team’s efforts. “It’s amazing. It really speaks to their dedication and willingness in such an awkward year.”