Liberty Forensics Team Embraces a Switch to Online Tournaments, Considering it a Valuable Learning Experience for Students

The tournaments for Liberty’s Forensics Speech Team have been moved online this year due to COVID-19 concerns.

Forensics coach Denise Thomas said that while team members yearn for the sense of community that in-person tournaments built, they anticipate learning a valuable new communication skillset. 

According to Thomas, tournaments are now held online in either a synchronous or an asynchronous form. A synchronous tournament most closely resembles an in-person tournament, as everything is done live in front of the camera. In an asynchronous tournament, students record themselves performing their speeches or interpretative performances and submit those ahead of the tournament.

The team uses a platform called Yaatly to join virtually with other schools around the country for tournaments. Students stream live from whatever device is available to them. They have the option to stream the tournament with team members in Green Hall or from their home or dorm. 

One team member, Victorie Norman, performs poetry interpretation, taking a selection of poems from one author and putting them into a 10-minute program representing a certain theme.

Another member, Rachel Pruski, participates in the debate category where she is given a statement to agree or disagree with and must defend her stance.

Both students appreciate the chance that traveling to tournaments afforded them to interact with students from other schools. 

“You’re encouraging one another to be a light, because we go to secular competitions usually. Our purpose there is to bring God glory and build each other up in that,” Norman said. 

The team competed in its first virtual tournament on the weekend of Oct. 2., bringing home nine individual awards and one team award.

“Everybody enjoyed what they did, and it was a great chance to get out and try our pieces live,” Norman said. 

While having tournaments online allows the team to continue to compete this season, members agree that this format lacks many components of the usual forensics team experience.

Thomas said not having the opportunity to watch students from other schools perform was a major challenge. 

“We’re missing that really important element of observing and thereby refining and honing our own skills. So we have to figure out how to overcome that,” Thomas said. 

Thomas also mourns the loss of her team’s opportunity cultivate community in-person, as they no longer gather for long bus rides to tournaments or team dinners on Tuesday evenings.

“Their conversations would be lively, and they would have discussions and arguments where they’d really challenge each other and encourage each other,” Thomas said. “Now their team meetings are in this huge room where they’re all spread out wearing masks and hardly anybody says anything. They’re having to learn new ways of connecting as a team.”

For Norman, the change in audience from a room full of people to a camera lens has been one of the most challenging things for the team to adapt to. 

“There’s nobody in the room, nobody for me to feed off of. I’m playing to a camera,” Norman said. “If you’re losing energy in the middle of your piece, you can’t look at that one person and bring it back to you.”

Pruski points out how body language cannot be utilized as a strategy because only the speaker’s face and neck will be seen on the screen.

“It forces people to choose their words carefully because that’s all that is really getting communicated, rather than a holistic communications approach that you get when in person with someone,” Pruski said. 

While conducting tournaments in an online format has presented its fair share of challenges, Thomas sees the doors that this change has opened up for the team. 

“We’re going to be able to compete with schools that we’ve heard about in other parts of the country but are too far for us to go to,” Thomas said. 

Thomas now coaches students to perform for the camera instead of performing for a live audience.  

“It’s a new skill set, and it’s a valuable one because so much communication in our world is mediated communication,” Thomas said.

Pruski and Norman both see how learning this new set of skills will aid them both in their performances for the forensics team and also in their future careers. 

“I’m learning how to not rely on other people to make my piece better but to go ahead and already have it at the standard that it needs to be,” Norman said. “I can evoke that emotion or that funny moment and know that it is funny, know that it was an emotional moment and be secure in the fact that I know my piece.”

Pruski sees the virtual realm as the direction that “businesses are going to go. It’s a great way to get comfortable speaking in that way and environment.”

Renee Farmer is a Feature Reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @reneefarmer.

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