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Forensics competition offers students many benefits. Some of the more significant benefits are:

• Hone your research skills - Participating in speech and debate competitions will improve your research skills so that you can explore complex topics and be able to discuss an issue in much greater detail than someone who has only a casual familiarity with major sociopolitical issues. This will make you stand out from the crowd in both your written work and your ability to speak intelligently about a variety of topics.
• Become a better writer - Multitudes of surveys reveal that employers are consistently looking for prospective employees who exhibit excellent written and oral communication skills. In forensics you will write and rewrite (with the help of your coaches) speeches with the objective of crafting a message that is timely, relevant and ultimately persuasive to a variety of audiences.
• Become a better performer - While the term "performance" is often thought of as being reserved only for venues like the theatre and the music concert hall, the reality is that much of our professional lives involve performance. We perform every time we participate in a job interview or try to express our ideas to others. In forensics you will learn how to perform both speeches you have written and literature written by others in such a way as to make it come alive for an audience.
• Be a better-informed citizen - Citizenship in contemporary life demands that participants be not only well-informed, but critical consumers of information. Speech and debate will enable you to understand a host of various issues confronting contemporary society in such a way that you can not only participate in debate and discussion about these issues, but you can be a leader in society and an ethical advocate for causes you believe in.
• Have fun - Few things in life are more enjoyable than working hard with a group of coaches and teammates in order to achieve excellence in an activity. Alumni from our program consistently develop close friendships that last a lifetime. Hours spent competing, traveling and having fun together builds a type of special camaraderie not unlike that of high-performing athletic teams.

We are a nationally competitive program which means that we travel across the county to face the best of the best. Most of the tournaments we attend are within one day's drive from southwest Missouri, but we generally take at least one or two trips a year that involve air travel. Recently, the team has traveled to tournaments in California, Louisiana, Minnesota, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Ohio, and Oregon, to name a few.

We generally attend between four and five tournaments a semester. Many programs we compete against at the national level travel more frequently than we do (between eight and ten tournaments a semester). At Å·ÃÀÊÓƵ we travel as often as we can, but always maintain our sensitivity to the time constraints and academic demands of our students.

In the late summer of each year we get the team together in Bolivar for a team retreat. This is a time for us to practice, work on events, prepare for the coming year, and get to know each other by having fun together. We generally take a few afternoons during our team retreats to explore some local points of interest in the Springfield-Branson metro area. When time, schedules, and budgets permit, we will spend the day before or after one of our far away trips to go and be tourists. We also get together for cookouts, holiday parties, and other events when we can. Once each year we also will take an afternoon to do a team community service project.