The Greater Johnstown High School Forensics team has had one of its most successful seasons to date.

Forensics is a public speaking competition. It has several categories ranging from theatrical to serious. At Greater Johnstown, we have students who compete in prose, persuasive, commentary, and extemporaneous. 

Prose is a type of dramatic reading. One can read any story aloud. Some choose to perform humorous pieces, while others perform stories with a more somber tone.

Persuasive is a more factual based category, where the speaker uses hard facts and testimonial in an attempt to convince the judge to agree with their thesis.

Commentary and Extemporaneous are very similar. The contestants pick a topic on the spot, and have thirty minutes to prepare and impromptu speech.

On February 3rd, at the district competition, Greater Johnstown had 5 contestants place and 3 qualify for states. Kate Csehoski placed 6th in persuasive and Austin Gibson placed 5th in commentary. The state qualifiers were Emily Knapp, who got 2nd in Prose, Cheyenne Maize, who was 2nd in commentary, and Madalena Price, the new district champion in prose.

The state competition will be held March 16th-18th.