he Haines Glacier Bards’s Drama Debate and Forensics team returned from state without finaling in any events, but with their heads up and motivated for next year, coach Hannah Bochart said.

Freshmen Willa Stuart and Colin Aldassy competed at East Anchorage High School without their third teammate, Selby Long, who was unable to travel.

Each Bard competed in three events in three rounds. Aldassy joined the debate team on short notice after Long’s absence.

“He learned the case in the hotel room in Juneau on the way up,” Bochart said.

The students debated whether Turkey was beneficial to NATO.

Aldassy also performed a humorous interpretation on the improbability of trash compactors on the Death Star and an informative speech on ants, a crowd pleaser at the regional tournaments that earned him recognition from his peers.

“Anytime they’d see him they’d say, ‘It’s ant man! It’s that ant guy.’ It did extremely well,” Bochart said.

Aldassy was just shy of finaling in that event. He said he became interested in ants after watching his favorite science channels on YouTube.

“Now I know a lot more about ants than I ever thought I would know,” Aldassy said. “It makes me happy, the sharing of knowledge and making people excited about scientific stuff. I’m kind of a geek about science stuff.”

Aldassy is eligible to compete in a national tournament in Louisville, Kentucky with his speech, but a scheduling conflict will prevent his participation. Aldassy also performed a duet with Stuart that they’d been practicing all year.

“It’s called ‘Allergic to Idiots,” Stuart said. “It’s pretty much what it sounds like.”

In the speech, Stuart’s character has outfitted herself in a Hazmat suit to protect her from a contagion of idiots. Aldassy’s character proceeds to argue against the necessity of such a suit and what follows is a debate that “really follows the template that we see in politics and online,” Bochart said.

Although their performance didn’t make it to the final round, it took first in a preliminary round, an impressive feat for two freshmen, Bochart said.

Stuart also competed in a humorous interpretation in which she plays a male character who is infatuated with a woman. He follows her and upon finding that she works at an animal shelter, proceeds to adopt more and more cats in an effort to talk to her.

“It’s a darkly comedic piece,” Bochart said. “She played it as a man and really did it justice. It was neat to watch this piece blossom throughout the year.”

Bochart said the team was unable to compete in many of the tournaments this year due to weather, pandemic conflicts and other travel-related issues but that the three freshmen have shown they’re capable of working hard.

“They have a lot of natural talent,” Bochart said. “I’ve found a very enthusiastic, excited team to be had here and they are hot to trot to recruit some of their peers and make DDF look appealing and exciting to the community at large. I’m really optimistic for the future of DDF. They’re doing quite well.”

Aldassy said he plans to recruit friends in an effort to bolster the team next year.

“This year was a reset year but I already got a few people on this list who I’m going to ping up to join next year,” Aldassy said. “We’re going to make the team big again. It’s going to be big and strong and something to be proud of.”

A date has yet to be scheduled, but the Bards will perform their pieces for the community in the coming weeks.