On Friday, Dec. 1, 10 individuals from the Lincoln Southwest speech team took a direct flight from Omaha to Washington D.C. to compete at the George Mason University tournament, Patriots Games. The Hawks returned home with 18 trophies.

The tournament started on Saturday, Dec. 2, at 9:30 a.m. on the GMU campus. The competitors from LSW consisted of sophomores Claire Timperley, Ezra Erickson, Brooklyn Shoemaker, juniors Brooklyn Bruggeman, Lillian Bittle, Emery Kramer, Jordyn Davis, Mason Farmer, Jack McCormick and senior Jack Anderson. Mr. Matt Heimes and Dr. Angela Kramer also joined the team for the tournament. The first day started with Flight B and consisted of three rounds of Flight B and two rounds of Flight A.

“My rounds on the first day were exhausting. Going into the second day I told myself I have to put every ounce of energy I had and ultimately it paid off,” Bruggeman said. “The best part of the trip was spending time with the people I love. We had a charcuterie party after the tournament. Basically, all of my teammates bought a bunch of food and we sat in a hotel room and played games. It was really fun to get to know my teammates and get to bond.”

The second day started off with round three of Flight A at 8:15 a.m. Throughout the day, there were quarterfinals, semifinals and finals to compete in each respective event. Awards started at 8 p.m. The LSW speech team placed fourth overall out of 55 teams from 14 states.

“I was so proud of us, we had ten people and we came out fourth out of 55 teams and most of them were from the east coast. We had people say, ‘Oh Nebraska, you guys don’t have that good of speech and debate, do you?’ It was really, really exciting to win individual sweepstakes because I didn’t expect it.” Anderson said. “After they got through the first eight people I thought, ‘Oh, it’s not gonna be me up there,’ and it was crazy because then it was.”

Awards

1 place – Farmer (OI), Bruggeman & Anderson (DUO)

2 place – Bruggeman (DI), Timperley (INFO)

3 place – Bittle (OI), Erickson & Timperley (DUO), Anderson (POI)

5 place – McCormick & Bittle (DUO), Anderson (EXT)

Semifinalists – Shoemaker (HI), McCormick (DI), Bruggeman (POI)

Individual Sweepstakes – Anderson (1) and Bruggeman (2)