Hawk Tawk

What a weekend! We met up at the train station around 8:30 and spent the next hour and a half waiting for a delayed train and practicing our pieces. Eventually the train arrived and overnight we traveled across Washington, Idaho and Montana before arriving in Whitefish, Montana around 7:30AM. Eventually we made our way to some delicious breakfast Thanks to the hotel getting us in hours earlier than expected, we got time for naps in before heading to lunch at a Kalispell institution; Norm's News.  Competition  began with round 1 at 2pm and Round 4 ending at 10pm. What a long day! After round 5 the next morning, we waited for the semi-finals breaks to post. Semi-Finalists: POI: Monica Winn, Jacob Talsmat, Caleb Hernandez DI: Monica Winn Informative: Malene Garcia Both Ford Powers and Caleb Hernandez in Duo and Eric Harrod in Original Oratory were very close to breaking into Semi Final rounds. Finalist: POI: Monica

First, though, THANK YOU to the team, for doing the heavy lifting of setting up and cleaning up. Even though they were all exhausted, they made sure we left things in good order. Thank you to all the parents, staff, and friends who volunteered to judge a few rounds. Your efforts were essential to our ability to compete.  Thank you to the teachers whose rooms we used, and to our amazing custodial staff. If you have any issues with your classroom, please let me know so we can improve our process when we host the National Qualifying tournament in February. Thank you to  Phil Koestner , who spent most of the day with us and judged debates. Thank you to all of the teams who came, and particularly to the ones who came from Spokane! Having new competition makes us all better. Team: Individual Events Champion. FIRST PLACE ·          Audra Totten, Novice Expository Speaking ·          Malene Garcia, Open Expository Speaking ·          Linda Corona, Novice Tall Tales ·