South Dakota State University’s Jackrabbits Forensics team earned the Tier two National Championship in the Pi Kappa Delta 2025 National Comprehensive Tournament last week. The event was held March 13-16 at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio and is considered to be one of the largest forensics tournaments in the nation.

Pi Kappa Delta, a national forensics honorary society, classifies team awards into three tiers based on the number of entries from each participating school. Along with that, the team secured third place in the individual event sweepstakes, and several members advanced to quarterfinals, semifinals and final rounds.

Joshua Westwick, director of the school of communication and journalism, said “Forensics provides a co-curricular opportunity for students to develop their communication, listening and critical thinking skills while focusing on the important issues that are impacting our world.” He is thrilled at their success at the Pi Kappa Delta national tournament.

“They have earned this level of recognition,” said Westwick.

The forensics team has been around since the second course catalog of the Dakota Ag College and has been a chapter of Pi Kappa Delta since 1920. They have been continually going to nationals since then. Andrea Carlile, director of forensics and assistant professor of communication studies, has been the coach for the forensics team since the fall of 2012. She meets one-on-one with students on a particular event or focuses on a particular skill throughout the season. On Tuesdays, they have a team meeting and then an hour-and-a-half of practice rotation where students are paired up with another teammate and they do run throughs of events together.

“I think it’s really important that a team member knows what other team members are doing as they rely on each other to help hone their performances,” Carlile said.      

This year, the forensics team has gathered three graduate students to help coach the team and give them additional perspectives.

“We have the right coaching staff, the right students and the right mindset,” said Carlile. She hopes that 15 to 20 years from now, students will remember the experiences they had, their friendships and the memories they made. 

Students compete from October to April, but come back a week early from winter break before classes start to start practicing. They call it their “work week,” as students develop events, workshop ideas and do some team building exercises.

The team itself has 11 different individual speaking categories they compete in, and students that compete in those events have the same event or topic for the whole year that they refine and work on in the same way. They compete in interpretive events that feel more like a dramatic monologue, participate in debates, write persuasive speeches and learn how to be a speaker in limited preparation events where you have seven minutes total to prepare in another category.

Going into the national tournament, they had a very successful regular season and placed top five at ten tournaments. Although Pi Kappa Delta is an open national tournament, the team had their own standards to make it there. Students had to have a minimum of three individual events and a commitment to do at least one special event that Pi Kappa Delta offered.

“The work ethic and ability to commit yourself to be a great performer is how we selected our criteria for Phi Kappa Delta,” Carlile said.

The largest team they have seen consisted of 12 students. This year, 16 students made up the team’s roster. Learning how to navigate a bigger team was one of the challenges Carlile faced.

“I know it doesn’t seem like a big deal of an increase from 12 to 16 but I think we definitely learned as we became a bigger team, how we work with that,” said Carlile.

Rachael Guler, a senior psychology and political science double major, has been a part of the forensics team all four years at SDSU. At the national tournament, she competed in informative speaking, persuasive, after dinner speaking, impromptu and extemporaneous speaking. At 16 years old, she was recruited by Carlile not only because of her abilities, but also her passion for the activity.

“I met her and some of the people on the team and was like yeah, that’s where I need to go and where I need to compete,” said Guler.

To help her prepare for nationals this season, she said that receiving harsh feedback from those who are closest to her helped her prepare, as they pay better attention to all the nit-picky things that can help you put out the best in the end. The biggest challenge she has faced so far is trying to put the best out there.

“It is my last year ever being able to do speech and debate, and I’ve been doing it for 10 years, so just trying to put in the highest quality, but also getting better and keep placing,” said Guler.

She earned eighth place in informative speaking and fourth place in persuasive speaking at the national tournament.

 Abi Slater is a freshman psychology major on the forensics team this year. She competed in communications analysis, info duo, debate and Spanish interpretation at the national tournament. She joined speech in high school and knew it was something she wanted to continue doing into her college career as it became a big part of her life.

“When I came to SDSU and met Dr. Carlile I was like ‘Oh my gosh, she’s funny and very personable’ and felt like she was a really good person to have as a coach,” Slater said.

After meeting Carlile, she met her teammates and saw the work ethic everyone was putting in, making her want to work even harder. Most of her events consisted of repetition, so going over problem areas and making sure people were watching her helped her practice and be successful for the national tournament.

As a freshman going into the tournament, she had the mindset that if she didn’t place, she would be just fine. Now that the tournament is over, she was excited and proud of herself on how well she did after being a finalist in all of her events.

“I am no longer afraid to speak in front of a crowd, which is something I would have never imagined myself doing,” said Slater.

She earned fifth place in Spanish interpretation and was a JV parliamentary debate champion with Emma Arneson at the national tournament.

After this tournament, Carlile saw this to be more than just the competitive outcomes. She saw it as a reflection on the students ability to be committed to something and the ability to take feedback and criticism and to continually improve themselves and their messages. She also saw it as an exciting opportunity to represent SDSU at the national level as there is a great amount of pride in the school and the team.

“At the end of our warmups, we always sing ‘Ring the Bells’ as we take great pride here and represent SDSU,” said Carlile.

The forensics team is currently practicing for the American Forensics National Speech Tournament in less than two weeks. The tournament is in Charlotte, North Carolina, where 15 students qualified in 42 events, the most in school history. Everyone that competes in the tournament has to place in at least two regular season tournaments, with the sum of their placings equaling five or less.

“We’re really excited about this opportunity as it is kind of the best of the best,” said Carlile.

Later in April, the forensics team will send two students to the interstate oratory, the oldest public speaking contest in America. Each state can send up to two contestants and so far, South Dakota has had representatives since 2015.

“It’s just an honor to be a part of this journey,” said Carlile.