Speech and debate success follows Katie Badget to college at NWC

Rocky Mountain High School graduate Katie Badget was known for her speech and debate accomplishments throughout her high school career. After graduating, she began attending Northwest College in Powell and joined the speech and debate team there.

Badget first joined the speech and debate team her sophomore year of high school, the fall of 2021.

Badget shared that Hiedi Christensen was the first person to encourage her to join speech and debate.

“She walked up to me after I performed in the school play my freshman year and encouraged me to try it out,” Badget said. “As for what motivated me to keep going, I just really liked the competition and friends I made along the way.” 

College and high school speech and debate programs differ in a few ways. Badget explained that the distinctions range from scheduling variations to what is appropriate to put into a speech.

“Another thing I struggled with adjusting to the college environment was making a speech relevant to the judges,” Badget said. “There are also basically no local tournaments, so you have to get used to long trips.”

Badget competes in three events -- After Dinner Speaking (ADS), Informative Speaking and Program Oral Interpretation (POI).

ADS is an event where the competitor writes an informative or persuasive speech with the goal of being entertaining and funny.

“This is a pretty tough event since it gets awkward if your jokes don’t land, but you can’t always make everyone laugh since we all have different senses of humor,” Badget explained. “A joke that would be hilarious to me and my coach might not go as well in a round.”

In Informative Speaking, competitors select a topic that is interesting to themselves that the audience can also relate to. 

Program Oral Interpretation is the third event that Badget competes in.

“In this event, you take many different forms of published work, whether that be poetry, prose, dramatic works or even articles, and weave them together to tell a story,” Badget said. “This event is definitely my favorite since I find it to be a lot of fun to compete in, as well as observe. People can be so creative in this event.”

Badget has received numerous awards for just her first year in collegiate speech and debate. She placed top five in her events at the Salt Lake City, Casper and Albuquerque competitions. Because of her performance in her individual events, Badget has helped her team get bronze in the overall category, as well, and for individual sweepstakes. 

Badget shared that she is very grateful for her coaches Robert Becker and Jessica Jatkowski. They were very welcoming to Badget when she first joined the team and put in a lot of time and effort to help the team members be the best they could be.

“On top of being great coaches, they’re also very encouraging people in general, wishing me luck before concerts I performed in and checking in on us while we did homework when we weren’t competing,” Badget said. “They’re the best coaches I could have asked for, and I can’t wait to work with them this coming season.”