The SHSU speech and debate team made a good showing at the national competition this past weekend while competing against close to 500 of the top students in the country.”The team did fantastic,” said Deborah Hatton, coach and director of forensics at SHSU. “The squad, as a whole, finished just out of the top 20.””The competition was extremely difficult. It was stressful, but it was worth it,” said Melissa Allen, who was a quarterfinalist in prose interpretation. “We stayed busy the whole time. If we weren’t in a round, we were watching a round.””Everything went very well for us,” Sarah Williams, team member, said. “We were all very happy about Melissa being a quarterfinalist.”Allen is a junior speech major, and this is her second semester with the SHSU squad. Allen said speech and debate competition has increased her confidence about speaking in front of people and helped her in building her people skills. “You really learn people skills. You learn to play the game,” Allen said. Williams added that speech competition, for her, is addictive. “I just love it, and it helps that we have a great coach (Hatton),” she said.”The Texas district where we compete, is number one in the nation, so every competition for us is nationals quality,” Allen said. “This competition was just the cream of the crop. Even if you get up there and speak perfectly, if you don’t exude confidence, you’ll lose. You have to impress the judges.”Both Allen and Williams said one of the hardest things about being on the squad was the time and financial commitments each person has to make. “We travel three out of four weekends and practice 10 or more hours per week,” Allen said. “On top of that, we wind up paying for most of our travel expenses.”The team did receive extra funding this year to compete at the national level. “We would like to thank all the administrators from the dean’s office that have helped the squad this year,” Hatton said.According to Allen, most of the team members plan to attend graduate school or law school after graduation. “I don’t know what it is, but we all seem to want to do the same thing,” she said.The University of Texas earned the top honors at the competition, which was held in Peoria, Ill.