MavForensics Continues Winning Tradition

It was another strong finish on the national stage as the School of Communication's Mavforensics team finished 14th overall in the open division at the 2024 American Forensics Association National Speech Tournament (AFA-NST) hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

This year's competition had 58 different teams and more than 300 students with over 1100 individual event entries. Overall, the team placed 14th out of 58 Colleges & Universities from across the nation. The team had seven events advance to quarterfinals, and one event advance to semifinals. The team also had eight different students break into quarterfinal rounds, including five freshmen.

The AFA-NST is a historically one of the most challenging tournaments with a competitive qualification process and a high entry number. Despite every team being capped at 66 individual entries, it is extremely difficult to achieve an out round status of Quarterfinalist, Semifinalist, or Finalist in any of the 11 different speaking events as each preliminary round of competition is ranked by a 2-judge panel.

Overall, Mavforensics qualified 48 individual speaking events across all 11 event categories this year!

This year's team was one of the youngest in recent years as it was comprised of freshman, sophomores and juniors with the intent of returning next year for another run at a national championship.