By Ashley Bradley/ne news editor
The NE Campus forensics team won competitions in San Antonio at the Community College Forensics tournament Feb. 13 and 14. Eight team members participated in the tournament, and five won medals.
Courtney Stuart placed third and Whitney Huska fourth in the prose event. Elizabeth Price placed third in dramatic interpretation, Mark Young fifth in the program oral interpretation and Manuella Yenga sixth in poetry.
Speech instructor and forensics team advisor Anne Fleischer said she was pleased with the team’s performance.
“We braved through the snow on Friday,” she said. “They are all very dedicated students.”
Stuart performed her piece “Leaving But Not on a Jet Plane.”
“It’s about a woman selling her house and all of the comedic mishaps that come along with selling it,” she said.
She has been performing since her freshman year in high school and said she enjoys it.
“I’m the veteran of the team,” she said.
Huska performed “I Like You” written by Amy Sedaris. The comedy piece centers on the importance of etiquette and the role it plays in people’s lives.
Price performed “All About Eggs” about a woman who can’t have children and asks her sister to help her.
Price said the piece is solely about self-sacrifice and the bonds between family members.
Price, in her second semester on the forensics team, said she enjoys watching and learning through other people’s pieces.
“You learn from random pieces you see,” she said. “Traveling is fun, and my teammates are crazy cool.”
Young, a bald man, performed “Ode to Baldness.” He said the performance included a number of stories about bald men and the obstacles they run into. He said one discusses the top 10 reasons why being bald is manly, another discusses cures that have been invented to help baldness but don’t work and another discusses cancer patients who are bald.
“Cancer patients are taking sympathy from the real bald people,” he said in a humorous tone.
He said the only way to really combat being bald is by having a sense of humor.
“I wanted to do something different and funny,” he said. “That’s just my character. I always try to be funny.”
Yenga, who works for NE Campus disability services as a note-taker, performed “Compilation of Ghana Poetry Project.” She said the piece talked about the people of Ghana and the problems they are trying to change there.
“I felt connected to it because I’m from Africa,” she said. “It was a lot of pieces put together to discuss the African culture and how they strive to become better.”
The forensics team has three more tournaments scheduled in February and one in New York during spring break.