By Selby Lopez/reporter
NE Campus won two first-place awards while hosting the eighth annual Novice Tournament for speech and debate teams Sept. 27-28.
Besides TCC, five other Texas schools participated in the event: Central Texas College, Lamar State College, Mountain View College, Texas Southern University and San Jacinto College.
Instructional assistant Keith Royal and speech instructor Justin Blacklock, who coached the TCC speech and debate teams, said they took heart in the results.
“We were very proud to have our TCC teams be so successful in their events,” Blacklock said.
The tournament started with parliamentary debates, where students competed in teams of two. They were given a topic and a position to take 15 minutes before the round.
The prompts ranged from foreign and domestic policies to value and metaphor debates.
NE students Chris Alter and Connor Branach represented TCC in the parliamentary speech, placing third.
Branach also took first place in informative speaking and third place in both the extemporaneous and impromptu speech events.
During the interpretation segment, participants gave a 10-minute performance interpreting a piece of literature.
NE student Autumn Sprabary took first place in the prose interpretation and second place in the poetry interpretation. She also placed fourth in impromptu speaking.
