National Forensic Association

This year, we will be posting each Hall of Fame Inductee to congratulate them for this accomplishment!
Our final Hall of Fame Inductee is Craig Heyne!
Craig had out rounds at NFA in poetry, prose, DI, Duo, POI, ADS, and Rhetorical Criticism. Unfortunately, his senior year the national tournaments were cancelled due to COVID. However, he received an NFA Performance of Distinction in DI, POI, Rhetorical Criticism and a Performance of Highest Distinction in Duo Interpretation. As his former coach wrote, [his] “Freshman year, he had a lot of questions. When he wondered, “what do college judges look for?” he sat down and read our nationals ballots from the previous year…all of them…and used what he learned to help his teammates. By his sophomore year, he was elected by his peers as an officer on the ISU team, and as the NFA Junior Representative. In his two years as the NFA Representative, this nominee recommended and advocated for many of the access policies we take for granted including e-ballots, quiet rooms and the open-door policy. This nominee wanted to know “why NFA didn’t have POI?” He then proceeded to write a proposal to get it added – and pushed until POI was passed as an event at NFA. When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the 2020 season, he was the voice on the NFA Council who proposed a video archive of the work of the senior class, a project which eventually became the Performances of Distinction. He was an NFA student representative who cared deeply for the student body and advocated on behalf of the students. Upon graduation, he accepted a job with the game company What Do You Meme. There he applied his experience of bridging competition with communication to designing and marketing card games – some of which we use for Impromptu drills. Recently, he switched to marketing Bloom beverages. But his heart has never left Forensics. He still shows up for work weekends, reads scripts, reaches out to students. Craig is someone that has never stopped working to make the activity better and more welcoming for all students. We want to thank Craig for his contribution to our community!!!

This year, we will be posting each Hall of Fame Inductee to congratulate them for this accomplishment!
Our third Hall of Fame inductee is Saeed Malami!
Saeed joined the Speech and Debate team because it sounded intriguing to him. Despite having zero Forensics experience, he brought an immense level of enthusiasm, creativity, and dedication. In 2019 he won the Interstate Oratorical Competition while quarterfinaling in DI and Persuasion at NFA. His senior year was a constant stream of final rounds and first place trophies. At the end of his forensics journey, when all of the National tournaments were cancelled due to COVID, he was named by NFA as the overall Performer of Highest Distinction while winning Highest Distinction status in Poetry and Rhetorical Criticism. I’m sure that the last few months of his collegiate forensics career will always feel like a question mark to him but he took it in stride. His coach recounts this nominee shrugging and saying, “I know my s**t was good. I’m proud of it. I don’t need more than that.” More recently, this nominee works as a coder and web designer for Amazon, but for his side hustle he wrote a television treatment for a pilot, and has been in several meetings in LA regarding its production. We thank Saeed for his contributions to the community and wish him luck with the pilot!!!

Hi everyone!!! Its almost awards time. If you want to follow along with all of the action, join our livestream. The link is https://www.youtube.com/live/EWIeBCPihKg?si=Nj3B2kj3tW9d79JD

Happy Day Three of NFA!!! Just a couple friendly reminders as we strut into another lovely day of competition!!!