Although long car trips might be the boring part of competitions for some teams, for the speech and debate team, it’s one aspect they put to good use.

“It helps that we have such long van rides together,” said Arts & Sciences senior Claire Wolnisty, the captain of the speech team. “You know, Ohio’s 14 hours, so we get a lot of team bonding going on — Things like that help us get motivated in the face of large competitions.”

The team recently competed at the Fat Tuesday Swing Tournament in Kearney, Neb., on Feb. 6-7. It won 41 awards, including first place in the individual events team sweepstakes.

This semester, the team also competed in St. Louis, Mo. and Concordia, Neb., winning both.

Currently the team is preparing for the two national competitions in April. The American Forensics Association will hold its tournament the first week in April, while the National Forensics Association will hold its tournament the third week in April.

While most teams rely on the upperclassmen to carry them through big tournaments, this year’s speech team only has three juniors and seniors on the 11-member team; seven are freshmen.

“We have a very dedicated incoming class,” Wolnisty said. “We try to have the upperclassmen really help solidify [the team]. I know some teams really privilege the upperclassmen, and I don’t think that that’s true.

“We try and make everyone as big a part as possible.”

One of those freshmen is Annelise Ewing. The Arts & Sciences freshman competes in duo interpretation with fellow Arts & Sciences freshman Westin Miller. The team has placed first and second at multiple tournaments.

“For me, I’ve learned the difference between high school and college speech,” Ewing said. “But I’ve also learned how a team can support each other. I was the only speech person on my high school team.”

Another freshman on the team is Beth Kampschnieder, Business freshman. She is one of the informative and persuasive speakers for the team.

Kampschnieder is both excited and nervous for the national competition and said there’s much work to be done.

“Since I am competing against people who have done this for eight years, I just want to do well enough to earn team points to place well,” Kampschnieder said.

“Speech is both a team and individual sport.”

Ewing echoed Wolnisty, saying the team’s strength lies in its unity.

“We have an awesome team that supports each other, and we’re on each other’s cases about getting practice done. And we have two awesome coaches,” Ewing said.

The team is coached by Marty Birkholt and Laura Keimig. Birkholt, the director of forensics, focuses on debate while Keimig, the assistant director, coaches speech.

Ewing said the team’s goals at nationals are to place in the top 10 teams and to place in the top half of each round individually.

Wolnisty feels like the team has a good shot to do well.

“We’ve been competing in different states and in completely different types of tournaments, yet we’ve still managed to win — we’re very versatile.”

Brittney Potthast contributed to this article.