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Forensics Team Hosts 4th Annual National High School Competition
By Emma Epstein
Although George Mason University has received a great deal of press coverage in recent years for its students’ success on the basketball court, there is another less-publicized team with a long history of success: The Forensics Team.
During the first weekend of December 2007, Mason’s forensics team reached out to the community and hosted the fourth annual national invitational Patriot Games tournament for their high school counterparts. Competing teams hailed from 62 high schools representing 20 states across the country, from as far away as California, Iowa, and Florida. The students competed in twelve different events, ten forensics events, including poetry interpretation or storytelling and two debate events.
Head Coach Peter Pober founded the competition after arriving at Mason five years ago and said it has become a valuable way for high school and college students to interact within the common context of forensics.
Pober said that during the planning of the Patriot Games weekend, Mason students shift their role from competitor to mentor. “High school forensics competitors are gaining skills for the first time and as such the learning curve is huge,” Pober said. “In college, it’s those who have done it before taking their skills to another level.”
Mason students also gain valuable event and project management skills by planning the logistics of all aspects of the competition, from arranging for the provision of food to printing ballots. They also gain composition practice by writing questions for the two improvised forensics events with the guidance of Assistant Director Jason Warren, who Pober named “one of the most prominent extemporaneous coaches in the country.”
Pober also touted the interaction with younger students as a helpful means of identification and recruitment of strong freshman members. “In many cases, they [the members of Mason’s team] are better recruiters than I am,” he said.
The champion of the individual sweepstakes was Mike Dahlgren from Holy Ghost Prep, with Matt Wilson from Randolph in second place, and Nick Bateman from Loyola-Blakefield coming in third. The winner of the team sweepstakes was Ridge High School from New Jersey, with Holy Ghost Prep, from Pennsylvania coming in second place, and Loyola-Blakefield from Maryland in third. For full results visit: http://www.gmuforensics.org/pg4results.php
The Forensics Team is the university’s most successful academic team. Since its inception in 1971, the team has won more than 14,000 trophies, recently finishing second overall in the most competitive intercollegiate forensics competition of the fall semester, the 60th Annual L.E. Norton Forensics Tournament at Bradley University, Peoria, IL. Learn more by visiting the GMU Forensics Web site.
This first appeared on December 19, 2007.