Press Release: Glendale Community College

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Glendale Community College Speech & Debate Team Wows Nation

A small, tight-knit group of public speaking competitors swept the nation with highest honors, beating out the most competitive four-year speech & debate universities

GLENDALE, May 1, 2009 – A small, self-made team of students from Glendale Community College (GCC) have created a buzz in the recent wave of national collegiate forensics tournaments across the country. The 2009 National Forensics Association (NFA) speech and debate tournament awarded the GCC Speech & Debate Team with first place in NFA’s Division II, several individual awards, and a national championship in Informative Speaking, an honor received by only one student out of hundreds. The team placed 11th overall among such prestigious speech and debate programs as Western Kentucky University, Bradley University and the U.S. Air Force Academy.

The NFA competition has honored the best speakers in the country for over forty years, each year publishing a list of previous winners. Rarely is a community college acknowledged. Host to 78 colleges across the country for the 2009 tournament, GCC was one of the only 2-year institutions in attendance. Housing thousands of speeches, the tournament holds competitions in 11 different public speaking events: Persuasion, Impromptu, Extemporaneous, Rhetorical Criticism, Informative, After Dinner Speaking, Prose, Poetry, Dramatic Duo, Dramatic Interpretation and NFA-Lincoln Douglas Debate.

“Nationals is very much like the Olympics of speaking. There are several events like the javelin throw, the long jump and the 50 meter dash,” said senior competitor and GCC Speech & Debate Team President Robert Cannon. “Just like a track and field team, some members of our squad are better at some events than others, and very few can do them all.” Competing in eight events at the NFA tournament, Cannon beat out hundreds of competitors in each. Cannon won third place in Dramatic Interpretation and first place in Informative Speaking, earning the first national title in that event from a community college in the history of the NFA tournament, and the first California competitor to earn the distinction since 1978. Breaking several community college records at the NFA tournament, Cannon was awarded the 10th Overall Speaker award. Cannon, along with GCC competitor Shaw Davari, who left a four-year university to join GCC in January, both earned quarterfinalist awards in Poetry.

“Speech is about the mind. We teach how to think, how to express those thoughts, how to move the world through the spoken word,” said Director of Forensics and Chair of the Language Arts Division Jean Perry. When asked about what sets the GCC team apart from the rest, she responded, “We are a family; we help one another; we take in everyone,” adding that among a richly diverse team with a wide range of ages and languages spoken, many continue to compete on for GCC despite offers from four-year universities.

Founded in 2004, the GCC team is a new face on the speech and debate circuit, compared to teams that have been around for decades, some having been founded in the 1960s. This year has been an exceptional year for GCC, winning awards at every competition they attended, branding themselves as an underdog team among more well-established, well-funded programs at four-year universities. Team members have logged hundreds of rehearsal hours, heading up to the school after hours and on weekends, and tirelessly practicing their speeches, continuously crafting more competitive angles for their performances. Several competitors have relied on creative ways of securing additional funding for team travel, including donating proceeds from judging high school debate tournaments to the team’s expense fund.

The GCC team’s wins at NFA in particular have landed the small, tight-knit team a foothold in one of the most competitive collegiate extra-curricular activities across the nation. In addition to the victories at NFA, the small team traveled to two other national tournaments this year, winning 16th place at the American Forensics Association National Individual Events Tournament at the University of Akron, Ohio, and 5th place at the 2009 Hell Froze Over tournament at Bradley University in Peoria, Illinois. Both of these competitions saw only a skeleton crew of four GCC competitors. “Our performance this year was a great surprise to everyone in the national community,” said team president Robert Cannon. “We were always the underdog at every competition we went to, but we always seemed to come out on top.”

With several new budding members ready to fill the shoes of senior competitors, the GCC team is slated for continued victories. “Our freshman and sophomore class is outstanding. I expect that we will do wonderful things next year,” affirmed Perry. The team roster boasts several hard-working members who have devoted themselves zealously for the past few years. Tiffany Brain, junior, and Matt Grisat, senior, sported several speeches this season, winning first place in several events at local competitions. Nisha Star, a foreign exchange student from Korea was enrolled in English as a Second Language classes in the fall, and in the spring not only qualified for the national tournament, but received first- and second-place rankings in preliminary rounds at the NFA tournament. Grant Toumasian, and Stephanie Pease accumulated the extra NFA points needed for the team to land 11th place out of nearly one hundred schools.

Despite the end of a successful and exhausting season, the GCC Speech & Debate Team is hosting an intramural competition on the GCC campus on May 15th as a new recruitment tool. That night at 8 p.m., Cannon will showcase many of his speeches from the past four years. The showcase will run May 15-16, 22-23 at 8:00 in Kreider Hall on the Glendale Community College Campus. Each night will feature different performances that Cannon cultivated over the past four years at GCC.

For more information on Robert Cannon’s speech showcase, please call (323) 309-4698. Team members will be available for interviewing and photo opportunities.

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