OCC speech and debate team a winner

The Orange Coast College Speech, Debate and Theater team returned to campus as national champions after traveling to Denver to compete in the Phi Rho Pi Community College Forensics Tournament last week.

OCC scored the most points, earning several gold medals in individual events in the large-school division, according to a news release.

Fourteen OCC students entered the national competition and 11 returned home with gold, silver and bronze medals. Some students, many of whom had never participated in the competition before, won more than one medal.

The parliamentary debate team of Austin Funk and David Miller, both of Huntington Beach, were voted by their peers as the winners of the Bossard-Twohy Parliamentary Debate Award, recognizing them as the top debate team at the tournament.

Last year, Funk was recognized as the top debater in a different category, making him one of two students in the history of the national tournament to be voted the top debater in two categories, according to the release.

Orange Coast also won a gold medal in interpreters theater, in which students present a staged and memorized show using oral interpretation techniques, the release stated.

—Hannah Fry

@HannahFryTCN