School board hears update in speech and debate team success

Lyle Wiley, head coach of the Hot Springs County High School Speech and Debate team, addressed the Hot Springs County School Board on Aug. 18 about the team’s extensive history and most recent accomplishments.

Hot Springs County High School founded its first chapter of the Speech and Debate team in 1962, which Wiley pointed out makes 2022 the team’s 60th year of competing in the fields of speech and debate.

Wiley elaborated that the National Speech and Debate Association recognized the Hot Springs County High School Speech and Debate team as a “legacy,” because the team had managed to compete at the national level for a total of 20 years out of its 60 years of overall competition.

“That’s really impressive for a very small school like ours,” Wiley said. “It means that, for a third of all the years we’ve competed, we’ve sent someone to nationals.”

Indeed, within the past five years, Wiley estimated the team has sent “more people than we’ve had total” competing at nationals previously, including five people last year and eight people the year before.

“So we’re doing a pretty good job against the competition,” said Wiley, before he described the unique dynamics of the Hot Springs County High School Speech and Debate team’s most recent trip to nationals this year. “When we go to nationals, we’re sort of like ‘Team Wyoming.’ We all (from Wyoming) celebrate each other’s successes,” regardless of their schools, “and our successes for the Wyoming community, since the percentage of kids who come from the state of Wyoming, as you can imagine, is pretty small.”

Wiley went so far as to point out that the state of Wyoming has a population of roughly 500,000, whereas the city of Louisville, which hosts the national tournaments, boasts a larger population than that, all by itself.

“And yet, Wyoming has been extremely impressive at the national tournaments in the last five years,” Wiley said. “We’re gaining a lot of momentum.”

Wiley lauded the latest wave of students in his team for setting a succession of records for points and performances for their school.

“They’ve been shattering every record” for the Hot Springs County High School Speech and Debate team, Wiley said.

Wiley described his students as “incredible competitors,” even in fields as challenging as extemporaneous debate, all while going up against even more “really amazing competitors” from other schools’ teams.

Wiley expressed his pride in his team’s students for “really stepping up” and “doing a great job for us,” all while he’s personally been “excited” to have what he sees as “a chance to extend the legacy of our Speech and Debate team.”

Wiley expressed his appreciation to the school district for “all of your support,” and pledged in return that his team would “continue to do our best to serve our community, our town, our school and, of course, our state at these national competitions.”

Wiley acknowledged that the team recently lost “a lot of really competitive seniors” to graduation, but his solution, as he told the board, will be to “recruit hard” and “extend more opportunities for students to step up and find their voice.”