Danville High School Forensics team won the 25-county Bluegrass Region Speech Tournament of the Kentucky High School Speech League Saturday — the team's fourth straight regional win.
DHS won by a large margin, nearly doubling the team score of second place Lexington Dunbar. Henry Clay, Lafayette and East Jessamine rounded out the top five teams.
Senior Sarabeth Marlowe and sophomore Laurel Payne, dual regional champions in events last year, added to their tallies at the 2013 meet. Payne led the team, winning the regional championship in poetry a second time, plus the regional title in broadcasting and the regional runner-up in prose interpretation.
Marlowe won the region in prose interpretation and was the regional runner-up to teammate Jack Graham in dramatic interpretation. In addition to Graham, Payne, and Marlowe, DHS also sported regional champions in declamation (freshman Hannah Draut) and oratory (senior Dylan Mullins). Addtionally, Danville speakers took home regional runners-up titles in five more events: Andrew McKinney (extemporaneous speaking and oratory), Jack Graham and Tyler Whitehouse (duo interpretation), Seth Massoud and Tyler Whitehouse (duo improvisation), Lydia Graham (humorous interpretation).
In total, DHS won half of the regional titles and runner-up awards in the 12 speech events.
Thirty-five entries qualified to compete at the state tournament in March at the University of Kentucky where Danville will seek to defend both the state speech and state debate titles the school won in 2012.
Qualifying to represent the Admirals at state are Cloe Anderson (duo interpretation and storytelling), Molly Anderson (broadcasting), Austin Barringer (dramatic interpretation), Tanisha Bruce (declamation and poetry interpretation), Sue Cook (declamation and prose interpretation), Hannah Draut (declamation), Jack Graham (dramatic interpretation, duo interpretation, improvisational duo), Lydia Graham (humorous interpretation and storytelling), Emma Jackson (humorous interpretation), Sarabeth Marlowe (dramatic interpretation, improvisational duo, prose), Seth Massoud (improvisational duo), Andrew McKinney (extemporaneous speaking, impromptu speaking, oratory), Dylan Mullins (impromptu speaking and oratory), Sydney Mullins (broadcasting), Sam Nelson (improvisational duo, oratory, and poetry), Laurel Payne (broadcasting, poetry, and prose), Phoebe Ross (extemporaneous speaking and impromptu speaking), Calvin Steber (extemporaneous speaking), Tyler Whitehouse (duo interpretation, humorous interpretation, and improvisational duo), and Kolton Winfield (duo interpretation, improvisational duo, and storytelling).
For more information, see the website at www. danvilleforensics.org.
