After the judge's scores were all tallied from the 2020-2021 State Class B/C Speech and Drama Tournament that was hosted by Huntley Project School District and held on January 29 – 30, the Hays-Lodgepole/Dodson cooperative team learned that they had won sixth place. While there was no trophy for that place at State, the two freshmen who comprised the team, Haley Cichosz and Jayla Haakanson, had earlier captured Class C Northern Divisional Second Place honors in Dramatic Theater.

Cichosz and Haakanson are both students at Hays-Lodgepole High School. "This is the first Speech and Drama trophy won by the school ever," Co-coach of the team, Paul Condon proudly exclaimed.

Prior to the beginning of the school year, the Montana High School Association (MHSA) formed a committee of speech and drama coaches from around the state and from all classifications to work on a virtual season, rather than cancel due to COVID. In a historic first, the MHSA committed to an all-virtual competition for the 2020-2021 Speech, Drama, and Debate season.

The traditional start date of the forensics season, October 1, was pushed into December, providing additional time for coaches and competitors to determine whether they could adapt to a new online platform.

In preparation for judging these performances, the National Speech and Debate Association created a platform similar to Zoom or Google Meet but with more security and designed specifically for speech competitions. With the program, called Tabroom.com, volunteer judges would create a free account and participate in training sessions to ensure that they could find comfort and confidence with the program and with judging online.

Co-coaches of the Hays-Lodgepole/Dodson cooperative team, Natacha Doney and Condon reported that they initially had nine students on their team, but the other seven didn't wish to compete virtually.

In this new format, competitors from around the state, but within their own classes (AA, A, B/C), performed online from their respective towns-whether from school or home. Each judge met the students virtually in online competition rooms, watched the performances and debates, and ranked the competitors as in previous years, providing written comments.

On their trophy-gaining journey, Cichosz and Haakanson competed in four meets in December and two in January, before performing at the Divisional and then the State Speech and Drama Tournaments.

"Every week-except for the Divisional Meet-was like a State Meet since everyone from Class B and C competed in the one meet each week," explained Condon.

During Divisional competition, which was held on January 22 – 23, the duo performed an adaptation of Beaches by Iris Rainier Dart. With their ten-minute piece based off of the film starring Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey, the two freshmen won the Dramatic Theater Northern Divisional title and earned enough points to finish second as a team in the Class C Northern Divisional Drama competition overall.

Getting to that point, the girls had to work through the difficulties that came with online tournaments, several pertaining to the website that the meets were held through. As described by Condon, although not having to travel can be considered an advantage, due to the time saved and the safety achieved, everything else was made more difficult with video problems, sound problems, and other technical issues.

"When we met in-person, it made for a more tiring but way more interesting day," Condon said.

Because of these concerns and because the students missed out on seeing other teams-interacting, conversing, and forming friendships, Condon hopes they don't have to go virtual again.

The competitors also missed out on award ceremonies where they would take the stage in triumph, feeling the electricity of excitement and listening to the cheers from packed school auditoriums or gymnasiums. Nevertheless, because the Speech, Drama, and Debate season wasn't cancelled, the students did have their chance to compete.

Given all of these history-making features, the 2020-2021 Speech, Drama, and Debate season will certainly be one that Cichosz, Haakanson, and the Hays-Lodgepole/Dodson Speech and Drama Team won't soon forget.