OCTC Speakers Win at 25th Annual BBQ Capital and the Transy WYRD Speech and Debate Tournaments

by Bernie Hale

Owensboro, KY (11/21/2019) — The OCTC Speech & Debate Team dominated the 25th Annual BBQ Capital-WYRD Speech/Debate Tournament held November 1-2, 2019. OCTC hosted the BBQ Capital tournament on Friday and shared hosting duties with Transylvania for their WYRD Tourney on Saturday. WYRD, pronounced "weird", is the campus radio station at Transylvania University and the coach who founded the tournament named it in honor of the station, where he worked as a student.

The OCTC Speech and Debate Team was led by Jesse Hibbs' championship performance earning first place in Novice NPDA Debate. The OCTC squad collected several team awards including: first place Community College Sweepstakes, second place in the Individual Events Sweepstakes for the BBQ Capital Speech Tourney, third place in the Combined Sweepstakes (debate and individual events combined), and fifth place for the Overall Debate Sweepstakes.

Jesse Hibbs also earned a fourth-place speaker award. Additionally, Jon Bozarth and Krishna Patel competed in the NPDA debate division. Bozarth earned an eighth-place speaker award in the NPDA novice division and a third-place speaker award in the IPDA novice division. Those performances earned OCTC a second-place team award as well.

Caleb Rush earned numerous awards in speech events during both individual event tournaments, Rush won first place in Dramatic Interpretation, second place in Extemporaneous Speaking, second place in Impromptu Storytelling, and third place in Impromptu Eulogy. He was the runner up in the Pentad, speakers entered in five or more events, at the BBQ Capital tourney and placed third in the Pentad on Saturday at the WYRD tournament.

In addition, Rush earned second place in Impromptu Eulogy, second place in Impromptu Storytelling, third place in Extemporaneous Speaking, fourth place in Impromptu Counseling, and was a finalist in Dramatic Interpretation during the WYRD tournament.

Phoenix Burchfield, a first-time forensics competitor for OCTC, placed seventh in the Pentad during the BBQ Capital tournament and earned first place in Radio Broadcasting, first place in Impromptu Eulogy, and third place in Impromptu Counseling. In the WYRD tournament on Saturday Burchfield placed fourth in Extemporaneous Speaking and was a finalist in Impromptu Storytelling.

Prem Patel placed sixth in the Pentad on Friday earning a second-place award in Radio Broadcasting, third place in Persuasion, fourth place in Impromptu Storytelling, and fourth place in Extemporaneous Speaking. In the WYRD half of the tournament on Saturday Patel earned third place honors in Impromptu Counseling, third place in Impromptu Eulogy and third place in Persuasive Speaking.

Jon Bozarth earned fifth place in Impromptu Storytelling in the WYRD tournament where debaters were limited to one event.

Krishna Patel also debated in the Open Division of IPDA. For more information about the OCTC Speech & Debate Team please contact coach Dr. Bob Glenn at 270-686-4553 or bobj.glenn@kctcs.edu.

Owensboro Community & Technical College is one of the sixteen community and technical colleges that make up the Kentucky Community & Technical College System. OCTC serves the KY counties of Daviess, Hancock, Ohio and McLean. OCTC has three campuses in Daviess County and a Center and Annex in Hancock County. OCTC strives to serve the communities in the service area by providing associate degree education for transfer, state of the art technical education for students focusing on entering the workforce, customized business and industry solutions through the Workforce Solutions division, and adult education and business and industry testing through the SkillTrain unit.

The Kentucky Community and Technical College System is the Commonwealth's largest postsecondary institution with 16 colleges and more than 70 campuses. We also are Kentucky's largest provider of workforce training and online education. Through partnerships with business and industry, we align our programs to meet the needs of local employers. We help students fulfill their dreams of creating a better life through programs that lead directly to jobs or help them transfer to one of our four-year partners.

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