After winning two tournaments in Mankato, Minn., last weekend, the UW-Eau Claire forensics team will host a tournament Saturday as it hopes to qualify more people for the national tournament.

Despite having only two seniors and two juniors on this year’s team, Eau Claire finished second in two tournaments this year before winning two tournaments in Mankato.

“We went into Mankato not knowing what to expect,” senior team captain Scott Boras said. “Our team has a majority of sophomores, and that was their coming out party.”

Both tournaments lasted a day and a half. The first one, on Friday and Saturday, was hosted by Minnesota State University-Mankato, with Bethany Lutheran College serving as host for the second tournament.

Senior team captain Ben Schneider said one impressive thing about the team’s two wins was the number of people who qualified for the national meet in April.

Five members of the team qualified for the national tournament in nine different events, including Boras and Schneider.

Schneider qualified nationally in the impromptu speaking, extemporaneous and persuasion events. In impromptu speaking, competitors don’t know what they’ll be talking about until just before they begin.

“There’s a note card on a stand with a topic on it,” Schneider said. “Once you read the note card you have seven minutes to prepare and give a speech.

The goal is to get the preparation time down to a minute or a minute and a half.”

Boras also qualified in the impromptu category, and in dramatic interpretation. Boras said in dramatic interpretation, competitors perform a part of a play or monologue.

“You have to use the exact wording from the play, but you can cut and splice the lines,” he said. “You are being judged on your interpretive ability.”

For his dramatic interpretation, Boras presented a piece that he had written, which he said isn’t done often.

Eau Claire scored 211 points in the meet at Mankato and 230 points in the meet at Bethany, despite competing in only 31 events. In comparison, Texas Southern University competed in 106 events in both meets, scoring 144 points to finish fourth at Mankato and 152 points to finish fifth at Bethany.

Hastings College (Neb.) and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln finished second and third, respectively, at both meets.

On Saturday, Eau Claire will host a meet sanctioned by the Mid-American Forensics League.

Schneider said about 10 teams would be competing in the meet on campus, including defending national champion Bradley University (Ill.).

“It’s a completely different variety of competition,” Boras said. “You get to test yourself against different competition, using that as fuel to do well.”