'All teenagers have a desire to be heard'

Delta Charter High School speech-and-debate team coach Reed Niemi, left, is the proud instructor of national competitors Sheelah Bearfoot, William Hanson and Melissa Pacheco.
Michael McCollum/The Record

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Delta Charter students to compete in national speech-and-debate tournament

By Tony Sauro

Record Staff Writer

June 13, 2010 12:01 AMWhat do a bottle-rocket contest, a Miley Cyrus song, YouTube and the exhilaration of "liberation" have in common?

Each played a role in the ultimate success of three Delta Charter High School students who are competing in the National Forensic League Speech and Debate Tournament today through Friday in Kansas City, Mo.

Their heritages - American-Indian, Cambodian and a former teenage athlete -speak well of the county's diversity.

Sheelah Bearfoot, a 16 1/2-year-old sophomore, was competing in a science-class bottle-rocket competition when Reed Niemi, coach of the 300-student Tracy charter school's speech-and-debate team, spotted her.

"One day, he introduced himself at the high school," said Bearfoot, who'll be competing in international extemporaneous speaking as she did in the April 16-18 California state tournament. "He asked me about speech and I started thinking about how much fun it would be. A lot of people were skeptical, but everyone's been wonderfully supportive. Speech and debate is so unbelievably liberating."

Melissa Pacheco, 17, was back by popular demand at her school's May 27 graduation, singing Miley Cyrus' "The Climb" for her 143 senior classmates. An aspiring actor and theater instructor, she'd done the same thing (different song) in 2009.

"She's a very good singer, actress and performer," Niemi said of Pacheco, who's competing in dramatic interpretation - as she did in the state tournament - and can be seen on YouTube. "She's got a great performing knack."

YouTube helped direct junior William Hanson, 15, to his humorous interpretation routine: 10 minutes from "Rinse the Blood off My Toga," a 1957 bit by (Johnny) Wayne & (Frank) Shuster, a Canadian duo that became popular on Ed Sullivan's TV show in the 1950s and '60s.

"I thought it was funny," said Hanson, who also has competed in team debate and international extemporaneous speaking at the state tournament. I had to change it up a lot. It's about a Roman detective looking for the killer of Julius Caesar. But he's a clueless inspector."

Bearfoot, Pacheco and Hanson will be joined at the national tournament by Tyson Bonaparte and Will Nobriga, Bear Creek High's public forum debate team, and St. Mary's High's Matt Gordon (national extemporaneous) and San Singh, competing nationally for a second year in Lincoln-Douglas debate (see accompanying box).

The virtues of such achievements are obvious to Niemi, 41, once a successful speech student at Stockton's Stagg High. Delta Charter won a perpetual trophy (for "annually demonstrat(ing) continued excellence") during the national qualifying event it hosted on April 10.

"All teenagers have a desire to be heard," said Niemi, whose 30-member team - assisted by vice-principal/coach John Cardoza - represents 10 percent of Delta Charter's enrollment and has had nine students compete in the national tournament the past four years. "They want someone to listen to what they have to say - an adult captive they can show off to.

"Which is odd, since they really want to avoid embarrassment as teenagers. I remember that well. They also see the value where college is concerned. The Wall Street Journal (in 1999) said speech and debate is a No. 1 consideration when applying for college admissions. I tell them they can get a date, too. That takes confidence. It's the same with job interviews."

His three national competitors definitely don't lack self-esteem.

Bearfoot, whose heritage is half Chirakawa Apache, is a mighty mite with big ambitions.

She's aiming for Stanford University, the University of New Mexico or University of Alabama, where the bio-chemistry program (not just its football team) is first-rate and its speech-and-debate team ranked fifth nationally.

"It's become such a part of my life that I identify myself as a speech-and-debater," said Bearfoot, who makes turquoise jewelry and competes in academic decathlon. "I don't want to lose that identity. I want to do all-natural medicine. I want to know my being alive made a difference for someone else. I think bio-medical is the way to go."

She said her toughest challenge - preparing a seven-minute speech on a randomly selected question in 30 minutes - "was my very first topic ever: 'Is Myanmar (formerly Burma) on the road to democratic change?' "

Pacheco is headed for San Francisco State University, where she'll study drama, hoping to "start in little Broadway shows and, one day, be on the big screen. If not, I'd like to open my own mini-Juilliard (School), so I can teach."

She assembled her 10-minute reading from Loung Ung's book "First They Killed My Father: a Daughter of Cambodia Remembers," reliving the terror and trauma of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal 1975-79 war in Cambodia.

"It's a woman telling her side of what really happened," said Pacheco, whose Cambodian mother emigrated to the U.S. at age 7 and has heard her daughter's adaptation. "She has cried like a storm. It just brought back memories. A good handful of her family now is in Cambodia."

"Hanson was into sports (baseball, basketball, football). When he enrolled, though, Delta Charter wasn't. So he focused his competitive energies on speech and debate, but didn't start doing his Wayne & Shuster bit until second semester this school year.

"He has, wow, a very high IQ and EQ as well as regular intelligence," Niemi said. "He's learned a lot about how to refine his natural gift of gab, which is good, and still utilize it."

"I found out I was really, really good at it," Hanson said. "It's a lot of fun. I never was really shy. I wasn't one of those who don't feel like speaking. It was just easygoing for me."

He'll be back next year and hopes to combine his interests in problem-solving and mysteries into a career as a "criminal-justice astronomer."

He's not sure what to expect, but hopes the stars will be aligned favorably this week in Kansas City.

"I'm going to be practicing a lot and just trying to perfect and polish it up," Hanson said. "I hope I do well, but I'm not sure how I'll do until see what the competition is when we get there."

"I've just got to get it over with and see how far I can get," Pacheco said. "I used to tell myself I'm not gonna do good. Now I think I'm gonna do good. We're all winners by just being there."

Contact reporter Tony Sauro at (209) 546-8267 or tsauro@recordnet.com . Visit his blog at recordnet.com/lensblog.