Locally, the legacy of Worland Speech and Debate is well-known.

Having just won a championship in 3A last year, the program is renowned for its seemingly perpetual standing as a top speech and debate program in the state thanks to excellent coaching through the years from the likes of Kevin Tonkovich, Cornell Loschen and Rick Dorn.

Worland has also garnered a reputation for producing competitors who pursue speech and debate after they graduate high school.

Coach Rick Dorn said that currently, Worland speech and debate alumni are coaching the sport in six towns across Wyoming: Rawlins, Rock Springs, Cody, Powell, Casper and Worland.

The coaches in Cody, Powell and Casper were pupils of either Tonkovich or Loschen, but Dorn said, "The rest are literally my students."

Assistant coach Emily Myers said, "I think the common denominator between all of us alumni still being in the speech and debate community can be attributed to Rick. He probably won't say that because he's humble, but I think it's his fault."

Dominic Damiano graduated from Worland in 2016, continued speech and debate at Northwest College in Powell, and recently became the head coach in Rock Springs, coaching alongside his wife, Trysa.

Dorn said that it has been a great experience working with his former students in competitions. "It's like a reunion every week," he said.

He added, "Just last weekend, I spent a lot of time joking around with the Rock Springs people and talking to the Powell coach. And I get a lot of phone calls, I got a phone call from Dominic last night asking about how to do district stuff. That happens about once a week, I get a call from a former student. I guess I'll just always be their coach."

Bella Munoz, also a 2016 Worland graduate, continued speech and debate at Northwest College until she transferred to compete for Hastings College in Nebraska. She returned to Wyoming upon completing her elementary education degree and found herself the head coach of speech and debate in Rawlins.

On seeing her former coach while competing, Munoz said, "It's very surreal; sometimes it's a little weird, but it's also been a great experience, too, just because it's really different going from competing to coaching, and having Rick there has made the transition a lot easier. It's not only helped me, but it helps the kids that I coach."

She added, "I always tell myself my aim is to one day beat my old coach."

When Bella was asked what about her time in Worland made her want to pursue speech and debate further, she said, "It's a really fun environment to be in, and there are lots of opportunities."

Dorn, asked the same question, deferred to his student, senior Justice Nelson. She said, "I think that speech and debate has built them up so much that they want to share that, and help build up others and share the love. Here, a lot of the time all we have for coaches is Dorn, so the upperclassmen are helping out the freshmen and sophomores a lot. I think it starts there."

Dorn added, "You see in sports, someone who has a passion for something and does it at the collegiate level, they often will go on to eventually coach it themselves... Some of our speech kids go on to do politics or law, or something crazy like that so they don't continue speech. The ones that we see still in it are the ones in education, they get pulled in to coaching because they know how to do it, and that's a unique skill."

The only outlier to the education/speech coach theory, Myers is the Worland High School speech and debate team's assistant coach, and she is a dental assistant. She graduated from Worland High School in 2015 and went on to do parliamentary debate at Northwest College. She said, "I think part of the reason I came back is that I never left the debate community. I debated in college, and I had really good coaches that way, and when I came home, Rick said, 'You know what, you're here anyways, you might as well coach.'"

Myers has been glad to have the opportunity to make lifelong friends of people that she grew up with in speech and debate. She said, "Seeing Izzy (Bella Munoz) has been awesome because we were partners in high school, and then we were college roommates. It's funny, because neither of us planned on coaching, I think ... And I get to see Dominic Damiano, who just started in Rock Springs with his wife. We all used to hang out in our apartment at college, and now we get to hang out on weekends, too."

She stated that working alongside her former coach has been a great experience, saying, "It's always awesome to come back and see a former teacher through the eyes of an adult. Being able to see Rick from that standpoint has been amazing. A lot of people don't know that he went to school to be a counselor originally, and you see that when he works with these kids. He's much more than a coach: he's a counselor, a father figure; I've seen him pull a splinter out of a kid's finger. He just cares so much about the kids."

All Dorn could say is that he is part of a great community of people. He said, "Our Worlando Beach tournament this weekend was a great example of that, because we had countless alumni hop in to help. Kaitlyn Bostrom drove down from Bozeman, Montana. Zach Spadt was there, Josiah Batson just showed up Saturday morning, we didn't even know he was in town. We get lots of returnees who help out wherever they can."

With the culture present in Worland High School's speech and debate program, it's not surprising to see the legacy continue, even outside of the walls of the school.