Let's Talk About Wisconsin

This past weekend the team traveled to the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire for our second all-team tournament of the semester. An all-team tournament is just a weekend we all try to travel at the same time. These weekends allow each member to watch teammates in rounds and see the pieces and performances they might not have had an opportunity to yet. Now, that might sound odd - that we don’t all know what everyone else is doing. The reason for that is, most team members carry between 3-7 different events at a time. As a result, we just don’t have the capacity to watch every single piece from every person on the team. So traveling and watching teammates in final rounds is a great way to see what’s going on. 

"Swings" and "Quals"

The tournament we traveled to was a swing. What this means is that on both Saturday and Sunday, there is a complete tournament run. So each day starts with round 1 and ends with finals and awards, then the next day starts the process all over again. Swings are a great opportunity to receive lots of feedback from different judges since you have a guarantee of four preliminary rounds between the two days (two each day). Additionally, swings allow us to snatch up “legs”. Legs are what we call finals placements that help us qualify for nationals (or as we say, "qual"). The qualification process for the American Forensics Association Tournament is that each student must place in the final round of two separate tournaments, with their placements totaling five or fewer. So for example, this past weekend my DUO Interpretation places first on Saturday and second on Sunday, giving us a total of three and qualifying us for nationals. BUST had almost 10 quals from this weekend, which is a really great number for this time in the season when tournaments are ultra-competitive.

Specifics 

The swing we traveled to was called “Love Fest” and is held annually on the weekend closest to Valentine’s Day. Love Fest is a BUST favorite because the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire team goes all out decorating in pinks and reds. Additionally, students are encouraged to wear red or pink suits, ties, shoes, etc…. All the thoughtful theming is such a fun touch to a weekend that would otherwise be, a little long and tiring. The theme brings the energy way up. The tournament also sells Valentine’s cards you can send to your teammates or fellow competitors from other schools and serve as a fundraiser for a local, Eau Claire, domestic violence shelter. I love that the tournament hosts this fundraiser because college speech is very advocacy focused, and I love having tangible ways to bring that advocacy into our tournaments in more ways than one. 

Sealing the Envelope 

We had a blast traveling as an almost complete squad to UWEC! I was beyond thrilled to share all of my final rounds with teammates! Specifically, the duo final on Saturday was half Bradley duos! As my time in speech comes closer and close to the end, little moments like that are becoming all the more sentimental to me. I’m so thankful for my teammates, current and past! I feel so luck to be a small part of the BUST legacy, and can’t wait to see how the rest of the season goes! 

Talk Soon! 

Kaity :)