The Joliet Junior College speech team headed to Washington D.C. to compete at Phi Rho Pi Nationals. The school was represented by two first-year students, Israel Falana and Truett Bentsen. (The team, which started competing again for the first time at JJC in over a decade, were previously known as the JJC Forensics team, but now called the JJC Speech team.)
The National competition lasted from April 7-April 11, 2026, and saw the JJC Speech Team win a Bronze Award in Overall Team Sweepstakes, marking the first national sweepstakes win in the history of the program. The team also earned a Silver Award in the Individual Events Team Sweepstakes, placing just 7.5 points below the national champions.
According to one team adviser Al Golden, there were about 10-12 other teams in the same division as JJC, as well as 54 teams at nationals in total.
This was not JJC’s first time competing in this tournament. However, the last appearance the school made was 20 years ago. Before this year, JJC had only earned one silver medal at Phi Rho Pi, making the accolades accumulated by the team last month record-breaking and historic.
“A lot of the feedback we were getting from a lot of the people at the tournament was like, ‘this isn’t how it normally happens,’” Golden said. “Like, you don’t normally just walk into your first national tournament as a team and have this kind of success.”
Israel Falana, who started doing speech his senior year of high school, brought back a plethora of awards, including a Bronze Medal in Dramatic Interpretation, Silver Medal in Poetry Interpretation, Gold Medal in Prose Interpretation and in Program of Oral Interpretation, Third Place/2nd Runner Up in Overall Individual Sweepstakes (Speech and Debate combined).
“My program- that piece was the most important piece to me,” Falana said. “It was about Nigeria, where I’m from, and I was telling the story of them, me, us, as a collective, as a culture.”
Falana’s Program of Oral Interpretation depicted the experience and resilience of the Nigerian people in the face of Boko Haram, a group that refers to itself as the Nigerian Taliban.
“At the end of the day, you’re not just competing for a medal,” Falana said. “You’re competing to tell these stories, and to do these stories justice…Those stories, those people who were affected, they deserve more than just a medal.”
JJC’s speech program is rife with opportunity and provides platforms for people who have never been given one, to discuss topics that often fly under the radar. Its positive impact on its members should not be understated, and the current members would like to make that clear.
“Me personally, at nationals, I didn’t win squat,” Bentsen said lightheartedly. “I think it’s a testament to coach’s team-building ability that I can still feel essential next to a national champion. From day one, but even on day 180, I still feel essential.”
“Nobody wins alone,” Falana said. “These two have been the biggest aspects when it comes to encouraging me and making me better. The result just came with it.”
