Tuesday, March 22, 2016
By Bruce Walton
COLUMBIANA
Crystal Stone, a senior at Columbiana High School, knows what she wants when she sets her goals.
That’s why after the University of Alabama accepted her, she decided to apply for a scholarship that came with joining the university’s forensics speech and debate team.
At first she didn’t think they’d choose her, but Stone found the home of the Rolling Tide accepted her in February for the full scholarship of $10,000 for her yearly tuition and to join the Forensics Council Team in the fall.
“I knew anything could happen; I wasn’t expecting it,” Stone said. “So it was a pretty good surprise.”
The scholarship allowed applicants from around the country to compete to get on the debate team, and of the 40 applicants vying for 12 spots on the team, Stone secured hers.
The team has done well competitively, placing within the top 20 at the American Forensic Association’s National Individual Events Tournament for the past two decades. Bobby Imbody, director of the Forensics Council, said he found Stone an intriguing applicant.
“Since we’re a competitive team at the university and in the nation, we need to find the best and brightest that we can,” Imbody said. “And Crystal’s an excellent student in the classroom and a wonderful and competitive student in the forensics laboratory, so we felt like she was a good student for our program.”
Stone already competes in her school’s debate and speech team as an original oratory speaker, meaning she writes her own speeches and orally recites them to the audience and judges at competitions. She just recently qualified to compete in the National Speech and Debate Association Championship tournament at Salt Lake City in June.
Besides working on the debate team, Stone also plays softball and was on the varsity football team, where she was a special teams member and also signaled in specific plays.
“It’s kind of way different than speech, so I just have two different worlds and it’s great,” she said. “In one I’m with the guys, and they just treat me like their sister, and I love being out there with them.”
Working in both those extremely different areas even inspired her to write her speech for the debate team called “Binary Thinking,” which helped her win at multiple competitions as well as impress Imbody.
Her speech revolved around how society perceives things in politics, race and gender as only “black and white.” Stone still wants to ensure she keeps her love of sports and public speaking in the future by studying to be a sports broadcaster.
She said she owes a lot of her success to her team and the coaches because of the close relationship and the supportive environment that they have as a small school, which other schools don’t usually have. Pam Pesa, Stone’s speech coach, said she wasn’t surprised that she got the scholarship.
“If you know Crystal, you know that girl is going to be a success no matter what she decides to do because she just has that something special that [when] you coach over 30 years, you recognize in certain kids,” Pesa said.