Activity Profile: Forensics Students Shine

by Kyle McWilliams

One of the fantastic clubs to join starting in winter at Platteville High School is Forensics. Forensics is flexible because the teachers who run it understand that students are busy.The teachers meet with students before, during, or after school. 
Before you even consider going to competition you must choose among different categories. There are three distributions that these categories fall into: acting, intepretation, and speaking. Radio speaking, for example, would fall under the speaking, which is coached by Ms. Fredericks. Solo and group play acting are just two of the acting categories coached by Ms. Schober. And finally, prose is an interpretive category where students cut passages from literature works for performance. Ms. Kammerud coaches these categories. 
“I definitely wanted to do something in a group,” says Jake Klein (‘15). “I really like the different categories and the fact that no two performances are the same.” 
Students practice their pieces from late November until the local contest in February. This year the local contest took place February 4th. The team did not end up having more than the 25 entries that are allowed, and thus, everyone will be performing at the sub-district level at Lancaster High School on February 23rd. If students receive scores good enough to qualify for district, they’ll work toward that performance in mid-March. It all culminates at the state contest on April 7th this year where qualifiers from district will have a shot at medals.
Scoring is an interesting concept in Forensics. Each category has a different rubric, and scores are assigned out of a possible 25. This is the second year that head coach Ms. Schober will be taking the team to compete at the Lodi Forensics Invitational on February 21st. There they will compete for medals and trophies after four rounds of competition.
McKenzie Scanlan (‘15), a veteran performer of Forensics says, “Forensics has been a really fun and unique way to practice and enhance my public speaking skills and has given me different opportunities to perform.”