The University’s Speech, Forensics and Debate program will have big-school company at its invitational tomorrow — the biggest school in the country, in fact. The Ohio State University will be one of the fifteen institutions at the 61st annual Falcon Classic.

The free, day-long event will also feature a wide variety of smaller schools. These include Butler, Hillsdale, Malone, Ohio University and Eastern Michigan University — which Forensics and Debate Director Paul Alday says has one of the best programs in the country.

Alday should know; his group won the championship each of the last three years at final tournaments of the Collegiate Forensics Association — one of four governing bodies under which the University’s team competes.

Alday said the wins are part of a long tradition.

“Forensics team has been around since 1919,” Alday said. “We went to our first national tournament 15 years before the athletic department went to their first competition.”

The competition, against Harvard, came fifteen years before the school’s men’s swimming team rose to prominence.

With the University competing strongly, Alday is happy to see a large turnout this year for the team, which has 20 members this season.

“That’s up about a fourth from last year,” Alday said. “Each individual counts in the team’s competition format, which includes events in the subcategories of interpretation, platform speech and limited-preparation areas.”

“I try to correlate it with women’s gymnastics; they each do a series of events and those scores are all averaged for a team standing.”

Tony Wise, a senior at the University and the team’s senior member, backs up Alday’s analogy, saying the variety of events can pose a challenge.

“The interpretives and the persuasive arguments go well. I’m [unhappy with] the limited-prep stuff,” Wise said.

Wise thinks high school debate participants will find the environment familiar, with a few changes.

“In Ohio, in high school you only have one event that you do the entire year,” Wise said. “As opposed to this year — I’m doing six or seven events. That’s a little different.” Other than that, you know, it’s kind of the same. You wake up early and get home late.”

Alday said sometimes the team doesn’t get home at all, with events next spring planned in Missouri and in Montreal, the site of the Collegiate Forensics Association tournament.

“The hotel folks like us. We don’t trash the rooms like some of the teams they host.”

Alday said the first part of this season is closer to home, with tomorrow’s event followed by a trip to Otterbein College Oct. 9.

“We travel almost every weekend throughout the school year,” Alday said. “We’re starting out pretty light on that.”

Nonetheless, Alday said, there are plenty of challenges to staying home.

“Over 150 people are participating, and we have to make sure that they are in different rooms over campus, participating against different people throughout the tournament. We spend about a day just on scheduling.”