JJC Speech Team Returns, Wins Six Medals in Phi Rho Pi National Competition

After a nearly 15-year hiatus, Joliet Junior College's (JJC) speech and debate team re-formed in the 2025-2026 school year and had a triumphant return, winning six medals at the 2026 Phi Rho Pi National Forensic Tournament.

As a team, JJC won silver in individual events and an overall team bronze. Freshman competitor Israel Falana dominated in the individual competitions, earning bronze in dramatic interpretation, silver in poetry interpretation and golds for prose interpretation and oral interpretation. Among the individual competitors, Falana finished third.

"I think the most impressive thing about their performance at nationals was their perspective," said Al Golden, coach of JJC's speech team. "At nationals, in particular, we see people performing with very different regional styles, and it's easy to question yourself when that happens. Maybe they move around a lot more than we do, and you start to wonder if something is missing from your performance. But we learned to stay calm and grounded and remain true to the work we did."

The JJC speech team prepared through a combination of team meetings and tournaments. Weekly meetings provided time for group coaching. Students also had the opportunity for individual coaching sessions with Golden and the team's other coach, fellow JJC communications professor Tiffany Bruessard.

During the fall, the team competed at two tournaments and attended two more in the spring before heading to the regional and national competitions. No matter what tournament they were at, the speech team had the same mindset.

"A philosophy I shared with the students, from the very start, that I learned from a coach my senior year of competition is this: The national champion isn't necessarily the best competitor in the country," Golden said. "It's the person who performs consistently the best in those rounds, against those competitors, with those judges, on that weekend. We can't control who the competitors are, who the judges are or what they will think of us, so we have to focus on our performance and being as controlled and precise as we can be.

"Toward the end of the season, we built off that by embracing the idea that medals and trophies are only one way to measure the success of a performance, and they aren't necessarily the best way."

The speech team's national success comes after being on hiatus for over a decade. Golden was leading JJC's honors program and chose to take a break from the club. Then a lack of funding became a roadblock.

"When I stepped back from honors, I wanted to get the team restarted, but there was no budget," Golden said. "It took a while, but fine arts department chair, Lori Schahrer, was able to find a little bit of money in the department budget we could use. The team had been paused for about 15 years, so I was really excited to get things started again!"

Joining Falana on the restarted team in 2025-2026 was LeAndra Alston, Truett Bentsen, Joanna Corduan, Joseph Lyons Sr., Sean Miller and Leila Panek.

These students are studying different programs at the College, but all can find value in participating in the communication-based extracurricular activity.

"Communication is what connects each of us, so participation in any event that promotes communication skills is invaluable," Golden said. "We have students in the natural sciences, law enforcement, human services, education and political science. Regardless of what field our students choose to go into, they will need to be able to present information and work together collaboratively. Speech team emphasizes a number of critical skills in addition to researching, writing and presenting, such as time management, emotional intelligence, confidence and critical thinking."