Our very own B-CC Forensics Team was awarded first place at the Montgomery County Forensics League on February 10th. 

The team is coached by Mr. Gallagher. Max Posner, captain of the team, stated, “Mr. Gallagher has been a great coach and has always been very dedicated to the team,” adding, “not many teachers would consistently spend their Saturdays judging high school students’ speeches.”

There are four competitions per year, which contain three qualifying tournaments and one finals tournament. Schools present at the finals included Sherwood, Paint Branch, Blake, Blair, Churchill, Poolesville, and more. The team has speech and acting groups who perform interpretive, informative, and original pieces. 

Students participating in both sectors of the team have to be very knowledgeable about current events, and able to talk for extended periods of time on specific topics. This requires lots of practice, learning about the details of a plethora of events, practicing their speech skills, and gaining confidence. 

For the speech portion, students are given different prompts to which they have to respond to. There are 4 rounds which are, local, national, international, and mixed topics. They have 30 minutes to prepare and create an outline using short bullets and only prior knowledge, then present what they have come up with for a total of 7 minutes. The acting team performs things from poetry and drama to original works and persuasive speaking. 

Captain Max Posner concluded by saying the team is a, “very supportive community, and has helped me significantly improve my public speaking confidence and skill.”