The team was founded in 1944 by Grace Walsh, when she first came to teach here at the Eau Claire Normal School (at the time, she was the only female teacher here).

The next year we were hosting yearly collegiate and high school tournaments.

In 1951, she chartered the Wisconsin Zeta Chapter of Pi Kappa Delta, the national forensics honor society.

Wisconsin Zeta was for a very long time not only the largest chapter of PKD in the country, but also the most successful.

Grace taught Speech Comm (she was one of the founding members of the CJ Dept here and was the Department Chair for many years) and Coach Forensics for 36 years – establishing a tradition of nothing but excellence.

Grace coached 25 state Oratory Champions (who went on to IOC)

No other state team beat Eau Claire during Grace’s reign

Grace also played a key role in developing many of the Forensics standards/norms you’ll see in collegiate competition.

She was part of the group responsible for literally defining the events you will compete in.

She saw the birth of the national forensics organizations: NFA and AFA.

She was one of the founders (proposed and defined rules for) Rhet Crit!

Grace retired in 1980 – and since then, Eau Claire has stayed strong.

A bunch of team members visited Grace in 1998 (she passed away in 2000) and her advice was: “Be proud of what you do, and don’t take out junk.”

Today, we follow that advice: We have a supportive base of hundreds of Alumni – some of which are right here on campus!

In 2006, we hosted the NFA national tournament!

In 1993, we hosted AFA. We have a bid to host again in 2010.

Thanks to Grace, Eau Claire has attended every AFA and NFA national competition since its inception

On a state level:
We’ve also had far too many to count state champions, and as of 2009, have won the state team Championship each of the past 17 years.

The top two winners in Persuasion at the state tournament go on to IOC – Persuasion Nationals.

IOC is the oldest intercollegiate competitive event in existence and each state is only allowed to send two competitors.

UWEC has sent at least one competitor from Wisconsin for the last 14 years.

Since 2000 have had more than 50 individual state champions.

On a national level:
We’ve had countless national out round-ers, finalists, and champions
Forensics competition has no division brackets to separate out ‘Big Schools’ from ‘Small Schools’, but Eau Claire has almost consistently always been in the top 10 teams in the nation.