Roger Allen, 2010 Norris graduate, spends a lot of time talking at UNL.  He practiced a lot as a student at Norris helping his team to the Class B State title in 2009 and qualifying for national competition as a senior.  He’s still contributing by being one of the best “talkers” on the college level.

Roger’s talent and effort, along with the rest of the team’s, earned the UNL Speech and Debate team their third Big Ten Conference Championship on Oct. 12-13 at Northwestern University. UNL led the field with total of 293 points, ahead of second-place finisher Northwestern (163 points) and the University of Illinois (52 points). The Big Ten conference has a long-standing tradition of excellence in speech and debate.

"This is an outstanding accomplishment by our students and team. None of these students receive any scholarship money for being on the speech team, none of them will be drafted into the professional ranks,” said Aaron Duncan, a lecturer in communication studies who directs the UNL team. "They compete because of their love for this university and have tremendous passion for sharing their ideas."  Dawn Braithwaite, department chair of communication studies said in an interview published on UNL’s Newsroom, “Speech and debate has been an important co-curricular activity at UNL for 142 years.“This is an excellent start to the year for these outstanding students.”

The team is part of UNL's Department of Communication Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. The department explores human communication as it shapes and is shaped by relationships, institutions and societies. For more information on the department or the speech and debate team, go to http://comm.unl.edu/ (http://comm.unl.edu/ ).

(http://news.unl.edu/newsrooms/unltoday/article/speech-and-debate-team-wins-third-straig/)