Villiger first in state 12 times in 13 years

After ending a 10-year winning streak in 2007, the St. Joe’s Villiger Speech and Debate Society came away victorious at this year’s Pennsylvania Forensics Association State Tournament.

The annual tournament was held from Feb. 20–21 between students from seven universities in Pennsylvania. The students prepared discussion topics of their own personal interest and compete in different genres that include public address and interpretation. This year, the tournament was held at the California University of Pennsylvania.

Two state championship titles recognize Dennis Feldman, ’12, and Joe Dineen, ’11, as best in the state in the categories of dramatic interpretation and persuasion. Dineen will travel to the Interstate Oratorical Association (IOA) competition later this year to compete against the top speakers in the country in the Persuasive genre.

According to Erica Kane, ’11, a third year member of the team who picked up third place in rhetorical criticism and fourth in impromptu, St. Joe’s won the competition by over 100 points, besting Cedar Crest College, Lafayette, and the University of Pennsylvania among others.

“We work really hard, and we recruit really well from high school,” said Kane.
“We generally recruit people with scholarships, so that’s a big incentive. Over the past two years, we haven’t had the scholarship thing work out that well, so after my freshman year we started recruiting on campus. But this year we’re really shifting back to recruiting people directly from high school, and getting people who have been involved in the activity so as soon as they come in as freshmen they can be [competing] at nationals.”

Kane said that the drop in funding has somewhat affected the team’s ability to recruit, but that the scholarship only offers a small contribution towards the rising cost of private school.   

“The cost of private school is a big issue during the recession even with the small scholarship from the team,” Kane said. “It really varies from year to year by how much money is available and how many people there are. It doesn’t always make private school affordable, so that’s been an issue with people coming to our team.”

Kelsey Hockenberger, ’12, who won third place in Poetry, said that in each competition the speaker’s performance is compared with 10 to 20 other students for three consecutive rounds. The judges score the performances on a scale from one to six, one being the strongest and six the weakest.

“I really like the acting events right now, and I had a poetry program which takes all of these different poems and sort of cuts them up and puts them together in a sort of cohesive program and makes an argument,” said Hockenberger of her speech. “My program is about how the English language is seriously flawed but we manage to communicate despite these flaws.”

The Villiger Speech and Debate Society is coached through an alumni network and the advising of Robbert Del Casale, ’85. There is no full-time faculty member on campus to oversee the society’s practices and speech preparation.