Lovell/Rocky team building confidence one speech at a time

Katie Badget saw her attitude about public speaking transform from terrified to total confidence during the three years she participated on the Lovell/Rocky Speech and Debate team. Badget, a senior at Rocky Mountain High School, joined the team on the advice of a friend’s mother, who saw her perform in a school play and thought public speaking might be a good experience for her.

“Before I joined I was very shy and wouldn’t talk to people much. I think it helped me develop confidence in my public speaking skills,” she said. “Getting up on a stage or standing up in front of a classroom was terrifying to me. Now it doesn’t really faze me at all.”

Badget recalled how terrifying it was to compete her first few times.

“Yeah, it was a little nerve-racking at first,” she said.  “I was so nervous after my first round, at my very first tournament, that I just asked to be excused afterward.”

Badget chalked it up to “first time jitters” and said she was sure she wasn’t the first person to experience nervousness in the first round at a speech and debate competition.

Badget is autistic and has hearing loss in one ear. She said, before her speech and debate team experience, her social skills were somewhat awkward, and it was a challenge for her to make eye contact due to her autism. She said she felt the program helped her to overcome these challenges, in part, because the judges expect speakers to make eye contact and because the very nature of the program is to strengthen social and communication skills.

  Looking back at the experience, she acknowledged the life-changing benefits of participating in the program, strengthening not only her oral and written communication skills but also developing vital skills like critical thinking, persuasive speaking, research and presentation skills. Most of all it gave her confidence. It gave her a voice.

“One thing that was life-changing for me is that it made me feel like I had a voice,” she said. “I think sometimes when you’re growing up, especially as a teenager, you feel like you don’t have a voice, when you really do but you just need to learn how to use it.”

“Katie is a good example of what it takes to be successful,” said coach John Mickelson. “She put a lot of extra work in, and that’s important because speech and debate takes a big investment of your own time, and she was always giving that extra time.”

The speech and debate activity allows students to try different types of public speaking. Katie said her favorite is informative speaking.

“One of my favorites this year was an informative speaking piece, where I got to take any subject and make a speech about it,” she said.

Badget said she wanted to pick a medical related topic because it was a topic that typically piqued the interest of judges. She said she likes the informative speaking category because it allows her to work on her research skills and to use visual aids. She said she typically makes posters that she can point at during her presentations.

Her informative topic this year was about the medical condition Valproic Acid Syndrome--a rare disease caused by fetal exposure to Valproic acid that can cause symptoms like facial dysmorphia, congenital anomalies and developmental delay (especially in language and communication).

 The topic is very personal to Badget because she learned in recent years that she had been exposed to Valproic acid during fetal development.

“I learned recently that I had this, and I thought it would be an interesting topic because not a lot of people know about this,” she explained. 

She said working on an eight-minute speech on this topic required that she combine her research skills with her personal experience, resulting in a compelling speech that landed her a third-place win at the state competition in the 1A/2A division.

She also performed a “program oral interpretive speech” (POI) entitled “I am worth your time,” where she confidently talked about her disabilities. 

This was her first time competing in the POI event. Though she didn’t place at state in this category, she said she was “pretty high up in the rankings” of everyone in the state who gave a POI speech.

Badget said she competed at state all three years of her participation in the program. Last year she placed third in 1A/2A at State. In her first year, she placed second in 3A at State.

She also teamed up this season with freshman Lilian Wenstrom for a duo interpretation piece about a “tech addicted Alice in normal Wonderland.” She said the piece had a definite comedic element to it, and the duo got a lot of laughs during their performance.

“I think going to tournaments is a pretty good experience,” she said. “You get to go to places you’ve never been before, and I made so many friends. Sometimes it seemed like I made a new friend at every single tournament.”

Coach Mickelson noted that Badget took on a leadership role on the team, acting as team co-captain with fellow senior Ireeann Anderson. Badget said she enjoyed the leadership role, often acting as a go-between, relaying information between coaches and other team members. She said it was fun helping other teammates, especially with strategy.

Her advice to other students considering joining the speech and debate team? “I would say, if you have a chance to join, do it,” she said. “It’s really fun, and you get to meet a lot of amazing people. It’s not as scary as it seems, and it really helps with your confidence.”

Badget is planning to attend Northwest College, where she will earn a two-year degree in music education, before continuing her education to earn her teaching credential at either MSU Bozeman or Black Hills State College. She has already reached out to the speech and debate coaches at NWC and hopes to participate on the college team while she attends the college. Badget plays the clarinet and likes to sing and said she would ultimately like to teach music at the middle or high school level. In high school, she participated in both band and choir at RMHS.

This is the third year Mickelson and his wife, Heather, have co-coached the speech and debate team, with the help of volunteer coach Kiana Horsen.

“Most kids don’t know how to talk to people, and this (program) brings them out of their shell,” Mickelson said. “My reward is seeing them grow and learn. It’s rewarding to see them meet their goals and set new ones. It really prepares them for the future.”

About a dozen students from Lovell High School and Rocky Mountain High School participated on the team this year with various levels of commitment. Though the team will be losing two seniors who are graduating at the end of the school year (Badget and Anderson), all five of the team’s freshmen will return to the program with some good experience from this past season. Mickelson said he expects to have a good team going into next year.

 “All the freshmen will be great next year,” said Mickelson. “With the amount of effort they put in this year and the shock and awe of competing for the first time, I think they’ll be great next year because they will have more of an idea of what to expect and what is expected.”

The team meets twice a week on the Lovell High School campus. Mickelson said he hopes the team will be able to host a novice meet at LHS next year.

“Not all people are cut out to be athletes necessarily, and teenagers have a hard enough time trying to fit in anyway,” said Mickelson. “We want these kids to win, of course, but most of all, we want them to build confidence so they can face things in life and push through them. Personal fortitude is what we like to see.”