Staff Writer
WHEELING The victory took an extra year in coming, but the wait made the Wheeling Park High School speech team’s 41st consecutive state championship Saturday all the more sweeter, said head coach Bill Cornforth.
The team once again won the overall sweepstakes of the 2021 West Virginia Speech and Debate Tournament, with team members also taking home another 12 individual first-place trophies.
This year’s tournament took place virtually after the 2020 tournament was canceled due to COVID concerns, and students competed from classrooms at their home schools.
There was no traveling to a tournament site. Instead, students learned of their victories during a virtual award presentation ceremony they watched together from WPHS’s Beneke Theatre.
jking@theintelligencer.net
WHEELING The victory took an extra year in coming, but the wait made the Wheeling Park High School speech team’s 41st consecutive state championship Saturday all the more sweeter, coach Bill Cornforth said.
The team was the overall winner of the 2021 West Virginia Speech and Debate Tournament, with team members also taking home another 12 individual 1st place trophies.
This year’s tournament took place virtually after the 2020 tournament was canceled due to COVID-19 concerns, and students competed from classrooms at their home schools.
There was no traveling to a tournament site. Instead, students learned of their victories during a virtual award presentation ceremony they watched together from WPHS’s Beneke Theatre.
Staff Writer
Photo by Joselyn King
Towne Moores, far left, a member of the Wheeling Park High School speech team, practices before her classmates in preparation for the upcoming state championship tournament slated for March 13.
WHEELING The Wheeling Park High School speech team is on its way to a 41st consecutive state championship this month, but this time members take a virtual highway and not a school bus to get there.
“We’re still on the road to number 41,” said captain Lauren Marquart. “We just hit a pothole last year because of COVID, and it was a deep one.”
Last year the West Virginia Speech and Debate Association canceled its tournament amid COVID-19 concerns. But over the summer, the National Speech and Debate Association created a format for doing speech competitions virtually.