Lower Columbia College - Fighting Smelt Forensics

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Lower Columbia College - Fighting Smelt Forensics

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The Fighting Smelt are Lower Columbia College's competitive intercollegiate speech and debate team.

Our students compete regionally and nationally, and rank among the top community college programs in the country. For over 50 years, Lower Columbia College has had strong and successful Speech and Debate team. We take pride in our legacy and the generations of leaders who have come from our program. LCC Speech and Debate competes in the Northwest Forensics Conference (representing Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, northern Utah, and Alaska), and is a Phi Rho Pi program (representing top community colleges nationwide)

Our team participates in regional and national tournaments where student competitors go head to head with speakers and debaters from other schools. Our team members participate in a variety of activities, and there is a competition event for every interest:

Debate – we focus on IPDA, a one-on-one style of public debate
Limited Prep – including Impromptu and Extemporaneous Speaking
Interpretation – including Prose, Drama, and Poetry interpretation
Public Address – including Informative and Persuasive Speaking

Competitors learn and practice a variety of critical thinking, analytical, and public speaking skills. We strive to provide a rigorous intellectual experience for students that will be meaningful regardless of past experiences or future aspirations. LCC is an AA/EEO employer - lowercolumbia.edu/aa-eeo • LCC Clery Annual Security and Fire Safety Report available at lowercolumbia.edu/CleryASFR

10/12/2026

The Fighting Smelt are home from an ✨incredible✨ weekend of competition at the Steve Hunt Classic, hosted by Lewis & Clark Speech and Debate!

The squad of ten students finished first place in community college sweepstakes in both speech and debate competition… but even more importantly we grew as a team and supported each other through some really tough trials while we learn the ropes of this challenging activity.

Some competitive highlights include:

MERCEDES broke in all four of her events, and made run to senior IPDA semifinals!

IZZY advanced all of her speech events to finals!

DOUNIA powered through to novice IPDA semifinals!

DAMIEN was the champion of junior editorial commentary and a quarterfinalist in junior IPDA!

ALEX earned his first career breaks in extemporaneous speaking and IPDA!

DIVAA earned her first career break in IPDA (at the junior level!)

Jonah, Izabelle, and Sienna debated in competition for the first time!

We truly could not have pulled off all this success and achieved so much growth without our incredible community of alumni and friends of the team 🥹

This team feels really special, and we’re so excited to continue to grow together over the next several months 🐟

The Smelt will be back in action in two short weeks at Pacific University - see y’all then!

09/27/2026

The Fighting Smelt are SO back! 🐟

We just started our academic year this past Monday… but the Smelt have already traveled over 1000 miles, engaged in 52 debates, given 39 limited prep speeches, written five original speeches… plus we won five medals and a team sweepstakes award!

This weekend, a team of nine Smelt trekked to College of Southern Idaho for the Fran Tanner Open tournament. The squad impressively finished 2nd in community college sweepstakes (our program’s first ever sweepstakes award at this tournament!) 🏆

We’re so proud of EVERYONE’s results! Mercedes won gold in extemporaneous and bronze in impromptu, Jared finished silver in impromptu and bronze in open IPDA, and Aiden added a silver in junior IPDA 🥇🥈🥉

Every member of our team won at least one round of debate, including the first career wins for Dounia, Izzy, and Kaysen 🤩

And Mara and Vickey officially began their judging and coaching careers 😤

We have A LOT of work to do, and a quick turnaround before the the Steve Hunt Classic at Lewis and Clark College in just two weeks - stay tuned to see where this fresh school of Smelt goes next🐟

06/19/2026

Congratulations to our ‘25-‘26 Fighting Smelt graduates!

The academic year at LCC is (finally) in the books. It’s a bittersweet moment as we celebrate Mara, Covenant, Vickey, Ethan, Kamren, and Rayelynn moving on to bigger adventures.

Several Smelt walked at last night’s commencement ceremony, and many more came to support their peers. Mara gave an incredible speech as the featured student speaker. We honored Ameera with a posthumous degree.

We’re so proud of all that this special group has accomplished together. They have shown resilience and supported each other through the highest highs and the lowest lows.

But we also know that it’s time for what’s next - new challenges, new risks, new growth.

So it’s time to say goodbye… for now. Thank you for supporting us on our journey. Until next time 🐟

05/05/2026

Come celebrate the end of an amazing season with our team!

Members of the Fighting Smelt nationals squad will be performing some of our favorite and most successful entries at a FREE showcase event. We’re still finalizing some details, but the plan is to perform 10+ speeches and multiple debates across eight different categories of competition.

You’re welcome to come and go as your schedule allows… so feel free to arrive late or leave early!

Any questions about the event? Let us know and we’ll do our best to fill in the gaps! 🐟

04/12/2026

Over the last nine days, the Fighting Smelt have had a presence at three separate national tournaments. We’re thrilled to share these INCREDIBLY exciting results from the national stage:

Our squad won TWO NATIONAL TITLES! At the AFA National Speech Tournament, our squad tied with our friends from Tyler Junior College for first place among community colleges (and third place in limited entry sweeps). And at IPDA Nationals, LCC was named the community college season-long champion (as well as 15th place overall).

Also at IPDA Nationals, Mara Slabu was honored as the 10th best open-level IPDA debater in the nation (out of over 650 students). Meanwhile, at Phi Rho Pi nationals, Mara won GOLD in extemporaneous speaking. It was a deserved national title at the conclusion of a remarkable individual season.

But Mara wasn’t the only Smelt making moves at Phi Rho Pi – we had SEVEN different students earn a total of ten medals across seven distinct categories in all genres of competition.

Cumulatively, LCC won bronze awards in speech, in debate, and in overall team sweepstakes in the largest (Wyman) competitive division at the tournament.

A few other Phi Rho Pi accomplishments that we want to highlight include:

*Seamus Mahoney was awarded the Fish-Nelson award for NFA-LD after being selected by their peers as the competitor who represents the finest qualities of forensics.

*Mercedes Musser was named 2nd speaker in a field of 132 IPDA debaters (she also won bronze in both IPDA and impromptu)

*Covenant Adegbami broke in three events, including prose and POI. She has cemented herself as one of the very finest interpreters in LCC forensics history

*Divaa Nchau and Aiden Tran won silver in parliamentary debate, while Covenant Adegbami and Jared Doherty won bronze. These are LCC’s first parli breaks in over a decade.

*Kamren Mattison won silver in informative speaking, making him LCC’s first platform speech finalist since 2006

And what’s not captured in these results… is just how kind, caring, and supportive this SPECIAL team has been through a grueling week. There isn’t a sweepstakes award for love, but if there was we think this team would be competitive at the highest level.

04/10/2026

Day three of Phi Rho Pi nationals is in the books… and the Fighting Smelt are COOKING.

The first round of breaks dropped this afternoon, and we’re so excited about our NINE total breaks to semifinals:
*Divaa/Aiden in Parliamentary Debate
*Covenant/Jared in Parliamentary Debate
*Mara in IPDA Debate
*Mercedes in IPDA Debate
*Kamren in Informative Speaking
*Covenant in Program Oral Interpretation
*Mercedes in Impromptu Speaking
*Mara in Extemporaneous Speaking
*Covenant in Prose Interpretation

We don’t have comprehensive records… but we think this already represents one of the best results in our program’s history at Phi Rho Pi. It’s especially exciting to have success across multiple formats of debate, limited prep, platform, and interpretation. We’re so excited to have seven DIFFERENT Smelt representing our squad in elimination rounds.

We still have two huge days of competition ahead of us… but we’re so pleased with where we stand at this stage in the tournament. We’ll do our very best to keep you posted as the tournament progresses 🐟

04/07/2026

The Fighting Smelt are feeling good, looking GREAT, and ready to take on Phi Rho Pi Nationals!

Tonight’s opening banquet (which, yes, was Hunger Games themed) kicked off this year’s tournament, which will feature 53 of the top community and technical college speech and debate programs from across the country.

Over the next five days, our twelve students will perform a MINIMUM of 84 speeches and 65 debates across twelve different competitive formats (and that’s after our AFA squad already delivered 45 speeches on Saturday and Sunday).

This tournament is always a challenging test of focus, stamina, and balance. We need to find time for rest and homework, while also staying locked in at an elite level of competition.

This team is so special, and we hope that this tournament will provide a climactic end to what has already been an incredible season. We’ll do our best to keep you posted throughout the week 🐟

03/03/2026

Our hearts are so full.
Last weekend, ten Smelt came together for our final in-person regional tournament of the season. We were seeking community and structure and an opportunity to share some really important messages.

The Seattle Classic provided all of that and more. We spent a meaningful weekend together and with so many of our Fighting Smelt alumni. We sharpened some skills as we gear up for nationals. We ate some really incredible food.

Oh… and we also won the tournament 😏

The Fighting Smelt racked up a remarkable 196 team sweepstakes points en route to an outright tournament victory. All ten competitors advanced to at least one final round. We earned 34 individual trophies. Six of the top ten competitors at the tournament were from LCC.

Here are just SOME of the cool things that each of our competitors did:

MARA was the top individual competitor at the tournament after breaking all six of her events. She broke in open IPDA for the ninth consecutive tournament

VICKEY and ETHAN closed out novice IPDA

COVENANT was champion of both POI and Poetry💕

KAMREN was champion of informative (one of two speech events where Smelt swept the podium)

DIVAA won persuasive for the second consecutive tournament, this time with straight-1s

MERCEDES won her division of extemporaneous speaking for the third consecutive tournament

JARED finished third in both poetry and junior impromptu

DAMIEN broke in IPDA and open persuasive for the first time

RAYELYNN returned to in-person competition without missing a beat and broke in prose

We qualified seven additional events for the AFA National Speech Tournament

And were so happy to see all of our alums who competed (Charlotte, Keida, Seamus) and judged (Jaida, My, Adah, Ilinca, Mitchell, Julia) at the tournament 🤗

Winter quarter finals are upon us, so we’ll shift focus to academics for a little bit. But stay tuned for nationals season in April… because this is a SPECIAL school of Smelt, and they’re not finished yet 🐟

02/18/2026

The Fighting Smelt put an exclamation point on the conference season with an INCREDIBLE showing at our 53rd annual Dugaw Smelt Classic!

There may be too many exciting things to celebrate from the weekend… but let’s try.

TEN different Smelt advanced to elimination rounds in at least one event, including CHAMPIONS Divaa (open persuasive), Covenant (junior POI), and Mercedes (junior IPDA and novice extemporaneous).

Mara won The Shark Trophy for being the top individual competitor in open divisions in the tournament. She is the first LCC student to win this competitive award since her coach, Julia Mitchell, won the award in 2019.

This showing, in addition to our performances at past tournaments, meant that LCC was named conference champion in speech, conference champion in debate, and a gold program in division III (with enough sweepstakes points to have won gold in any competitive division).

These remarkable results reflect contributions from every single member of our team across the entire season. Congratulations to Mara, Kamren, Covenant, Jared, Aiden, Divaa, Mercedes, Vickey, Ethan, Damien, Rayelynn, Alex, Eric, and Ameera💗

We got to distribute exceptional medals, custom-created for our tournament by LCC welding students.

We had the opportunity to celebrate the careers of coaches Dennis Waller and Mike Ingram, who will be retiring at the end of the season.

We celebrated Valentine’s Day together - writing cards and leaving notes to express what we loved over the weekend.

And we’re so proud to have served as ambassadors for all of Lower Columbia College. We heard so many wonderful compliments about our campus and our community over the course of the weekend. We agree - LCC is pretty great.

We want to extend a massive THANK YOU to everyone who made this possible behind the scenes - the Student Programs, the Office of Instruction, Campus Services, Red Devil Cafe, the Rose Center for the Arts crew, and our amazing custodial and security teams. This tournament was truly a whole community effort.

It’s only appropriate to sign off this Valentine’s tournament with a message of love. We love you. You are special. Thank you for being part of our journey 💗💜💙🐟

01/26/2026

Fourteen Smelt came together on campus on this frigid January weekend to compete at the Fred Scheller Invitational online tournament, hosted by Pacific University.

By all measures, it was a remarkably successful tournament! LCC finished as the top community college, and third place in overall team sweepstakes. We advanced 24 entries to elimination rounds, and earned awards in eight different categories of competition.

We had SIX CHAMPIONS: Mara (open impromptu), Covenant (junior prose), Kamren (junior persuasive) Mercedes (novice extemporaneous), and Aiden (novice informative and impromptu)!

Ethan was top novice in both communication analysis and persuasive!

Eric finished third in editorial commentary at his first ever tournament!

Rayelynn was runner up in both novice prose and informative!

Damien finished third in both novice impromptu and extemporaneous!

Vickey advanced to finals in both novice prose and extemporaneous!

Alex won his first career round of debate!

In addition to these (and other) competitive results, we’re incredibly proud of our debating after challenging ourselves to prep for rounds independently. This was an intentional team decision as we pursue really ambitious end of season goals at Phi Rho Pi Nationals.

We’re so thankful to our LCC security and custodial teams for making all of this possible. Our ever-expanding team takes up a lot of space for long periods of time on our campus, and they did such a wonderful job of accommodating our needs.

And finally, we’re so grateful to our alumni - Mikey, Adah, Becca, Glenn, and Julia - for continuing to give back to our team as judges and in so many other ways. Thank you for continuing to support us from near and far.

Next up for the Smelt is the 53rd annual DUGAW SMELT CLASSIC! We’ll be taking over campus the 13th to 15th of February. Let us know if you want to be part of it - we think it’s going to be a wonderful weekend.

🐟🐟🐟

Address

1600 Maple Street
Longview, WA
98632

Website

https://lowercolumbia.edu/student-life/clubs/speech-debate/index.php

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