Forensics team earns state awards

ANTIGO — Five members of the Antigo High School forensics team placed in the state competition at Madison’s DeForest High School last Friday night.

Sophomore Greta Stowe, senior Claire Huess, and junior Evan Lundgren all earned perfect scores and gold medals in the team play-acting category. Seniors Kaitlin Pranke and Brett Powell earned silver and bronze medals in impromptu speaking and prose reading, respectively.

The five students qualified for the state competition after advancing out of multi-round sub-district and district competitions in the previous two months.

Forensics coach Christine Borchert complimented all five of the students on their performances.

“I think everyone did well in their categories, just because every category is so different,” Borchert said. “Everyone performed well in their grouping. I think at state, it’s hard because you get judged once, whereas at district and subdistrict, you have three different times you get judged. At state, you know you have to do your best in that one shot, and they did.

They’re always enthusiastic. They enjoy speaking, they enjoy participating. I think that sense of fun gets portrayed in their pieces and performances.”

Stowe, Huess, and Lundgren performed a 10-minute skit called “Elevator Games,” about three very dissimilar strangers stuck in an elevator. Lundgren’s sunny character took an optimistic view of their predicament, seeming to view it as an opportunity to get to know his fellow prisoners, and even nudging them to play a game to pass the time.

Huess’ and Stowe’s characters were not amused.

“I was Scott, but we changed my name to Sue,” said Huess. “I would say I was the logical one and I was trying to get us out of there, and I was not having a good time.”

“I was Barb. She was very upset and hysterical. She’s incredibly claustrophobic in the scene and rocking back and forth. Eventually, we both try to attack Evan,” Stowe laughed.

In Pranke’s impromptu category, competitors were made to select three separate prompts from an envelope, choose one, and then, within a six-minute window, both prepare and give a speech. Pranke’s topic was, “What would you do if you woke up and were as tiny as a mouse?”

Borchert said doing well in this impromptu category requires significant mental acuity.

“The student has to know, ‘OK, I have to make sure that I’m not prepping too long so I still have a quality speech within the six minute timeframe,’ which is really kind of fun. It’s nerve-wracking because you don’t know what you’re going to talk about,” Borchert said. “Hers was actually creative because she basically said that even if she were the size of a mouse, she would still be who she is now because of her background, so it was a very clever speech and different, which made it fun to listen to.”

Powell, in the monologue category, gave a dramatic reading of a story from the Magnus Archives, a podcast featuring unique, twisted tales. The story Powell read smacks of something from “The Twilight Zone.”

“One day, a daughter opens the door to her mother’s house and finds a woman who is not her mother,” Powell said. “She’s wearing her mother’s clothes, she’s acting like her mother, and everyone is insisting that this woman is her mother, but she’s not her mother. She’s going around talking to all these people and they’re like, ‘What are you talking about? This is your mother. This has always been your mother.’ All the pictures have all changed to be this new woman, and the whole time the girl is just like, ‘What killed my mother and replaced her? Who is this woman?’ It’s just about her slowly losing her marbles throughout the story.”

The five students spoke highly of the benefits they gleaned from participating in forensics.

“When I try to get people to join, a lot of people I talk to don’t know what it is or they’re absolutely terrified to do public speaking, which I think is all the more reason to join, because it gets you so much more comfortable with people,” Pranke said. “Also, people are very supportive and going up in front of a bunch of other nervous people, so it really calms you down a little bit and it has actually helped me in my classes where I had to give presentations where it’s like, ‘OK, I’ve done this before. I’ve gone to multiple competitions. I know how to talk in front of people.’”

Lundgren said forensics students from different schools often bond at competitions over their shared discomfort.

“It’s very welcoming and very supportive,” Lundgren said. “Usually if you do really well, people are quick with a compliment. They’ll be like, ‘Man, that was awesome. That was so great.’ If you don’t do so well, they’ll still be like, ‘Hey, we’re all nervous — you’ll do better next time.’”

Pranke, who joined forensics after a math teacher named Mr. Nedden recommended it to her in her freshman year, said she and other team mainstays have grown familiar with their competitors from other schools over the years.

“We had this dealio where we did play-acting and people would remember us. It had been like two years and they would still remember us,” she said.

“They said, ‘Oh my God — are you the dead cat people!? Oh my God, we loved your play!’” said Powell, remembering the day in question. “It was from ‘So Long Kitty’ by Ken Bradbury. We were hosting a cat funeral and then the cat turned out to not actually be dead.”

Borchert encouraged more students to join forensics because of its practicality.

“Everyone has to speak and learn how to speak in front of people and to people,” she said. “It’s just one of those things that everyone has to do. If you’re in a business, if you’re in your workplace, you have to speak, and this just helps to prepare you for it. It’s just a lot of fun. We really have a good bunch, and it is really just a good time.”