Hosting the 66th annual LE Norton Memorial Collegiate Speech Tournament
Students from 47 universities attending the event.
11/01/2013 9:59 AM
November 2nd and 3rd the Bradley University Speech Team will be hosting the 66th annual LE Norton Memorial Collegiate Speech Tournament. With 47 Universities from 21 different states in attendance, the Speech Team looks forward to honoring Dr. Norton, once again, with the largest collegiate speech tournament in the nation. This year’s competition will showcase 1,225 different speeches in the 11 different events. Each year the team infuses a theme with the tournament to emphasis that collegiate forensics is about more than just competition. This year’s theme is “The Wonderful World of Norton” inspired by Walt Disney.
“As we prepared for the tournament we found more and more parallels between Dr. Norton and Walt Disney” said Director of Forensics Ken Young. Young continued, “Just as Walt Disney was an innovator of his time so was Dr. Norton in collegiate forensics creating events such as Informative Speaking and Duo Interpretation that students still compete in to this day.”
The tournament hopes to embody many of the characteristics that Walt Disney saw in his creation of Disneyland. Walt Disney wrote, “Disneyland is often called a magic kingdom because it combines fantasy and history, adventure and learning, together with every variety of recreation and fun designed to appeal to everyone.” While maybe not quite as recreational, the team hopes the 600 students, coaches, and alumni participating in this year’s event will discover many of the other parallels to hold true.