The University of Alabama Forensics Team placed fifth in the nation last week for the first time since 2006.

The speech team traveled to Hutchinson, Kan., April 6 — 8 to compete in the American Forensics Association National Individual Event Tournament where they individually spoke 12 times in the quarterfinals, six times in semis and four times in the final round.

“If one person hadn’t competed, we might not have gotten that rank,” Katerina Pena, a junior and member of the team, said. “Every single person contributed.”

The University’s team beat out the sixth-place team by just a point and a half, a margin that could be skewed by one person ranking higher or lower in a preliminary round.

Speakers including junior Collin Metcalf competed in “limited prep” events in which they deliver a speech like they’ve been practicing it for months after only hearing the topic minutes before. In extemporaneous speaking, speakers are given prompts about global issues and give a seven-minute speech with at least seven sources just a half hour later.

“Mentally grueling stuff,” Metcalf said. “My question was something like, ‘How can the Muslim Brotherhood leverage relations with Israel to force the EU to give it a financial bailout package?’”

The other events range from informative and persuasive speeches to dramatic interpretations of prose and poetry.

“We hold a black book that signifies that someone else wrote it,” Pena, who competed in Program Oral Interpretation, said. “For POI it could be prose. It could be poetry. It could be a YouTube video.”

Team members spend at least an hour with the coaches every week for each event in which they participate, and they spend hours writing, revising and learning everything by heart. For speakers like sophomore Kevin Pabst, who competed in six events at nationals, this amounts to a huge time commitment.

“Six is the limit to what you can do in one year,” Pabst said. “The more you do, the more time you have to devote.”

Their public speaking skills aren’t the only things under scrutiny by the judges. The content of their arguments also has to be sound and convincing. This requires a great deal of research before they even open their mouths.

“One Sunday, I spent six or seven hours in the library looking up more current sources for my speech,” Metcalf said. “And that’s just one.”

All three interviewed speakers accredited much of the team’s success to the nine coaches who work with them throughout the year.

“It’s easy to forget when we’re worrying about four or five events,” Pena said. “[The coaches] are worrying about 60. It’s incredible.”

Pabst agreed, saying the time spent with coaches is imperative to giving a high-quality speech.

“All these coaches are people who have competed in forensics themselves when they were undergrads, a lot of them to great success, winning national titles and breaking to multiple final rounds,” Pabst said. “Their advice and help in these events are really priceless.”

The speakers said fifth place was their goal at the beginning of the year, and they are very proud of the outcome. This year continues a strong record of top-ten finishes, and the team has high hopes that next year will be as successful, if not better.

“Basically, the bottom line is we set a really high goal, and we accomplished a monumental task,” Metcalf said. “We were on top of the world.”