The West Texas A&M University Forensics Team has raised all the funds needed to travel to Barcelona, Spain March 6 through 13 for the International Forensics Association Competition in Spain’s second largest city. The team, which competes in various speaking events such as platform, interpretation and limited preparation events, was invited to compete at this particular international tournament. In order to afford to make the trip for this contest, the team members worked to raise a total of $26,000.

The team used many strategies in order to reach this goal, including selling Blow Pops for 25 cents each, using an online fundraising platform through GoFundMe, hosting a speech tournament, during which they ran a concession stand, and working with elementary and middle school students competing in speaking events.

“I think it’s really, really great that so many people have been willing to support our trip to Spain,” Wesley Alexander, freshman Advertising and Public Relations major, said. “The majority of us have never been out of the country so this is really cool for us to get to leave the country and explore other places in the world besides the Texas Panhandle.”

The team has spent the year competing and traveling to various speaking competitions on the weekends. Now that they have raised the money for their trip to Barcelona, the members will finally have the opportunity to go compete internationally.

“We’re just going to go out and do what we do every weekend, which is to have fun, try our best, put our hearts out on the table and hope that our hard work and dedication that we have been putting into our pieces and speeches shines through our performance,” Kimberly Garcia, senior Corporate Communication major, said. “It’ll be an honor to compete at an international level, because we get a chance to further spread our messages to other areas of the world.”

This should be an exceptional opportunity for the forensics team members, ten of which are first-generation students. In addition to having the chance to compete on an international level, the team members will be able to experience a different culture and landscape.

“It means a ton to get to go,” Connie McKee, Professor and coach of the Forensics Team, said. “I have a lot of first-generation students. I have a lot of kids that the only time they’ve been out of the Texas Panhandle would be when we went to speech events or something. So it’s going to be life-changing for them to go visit another culture, to see how other cultures function. It’s going to be neat to compete internationally. Just everything about it is going to be a life-changing trip, I think.”