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Features
November 12, 2021 Park’s Speech and Debate team inspires personal and educational growth
MacKenzie Coder Editor
“World War II hit and there wasn’t money and students were, at the time, I think a little bit more interested in theater than they were in speech and debate,” says Park’s Speech and Debate team coach Lora Cohn, Ph.D.
In 2017, the Speech and Debate team was reinstated at the Parkville campus for the first time since the 1940s. Cohn, who is also an associate professor of communication, was the driving force behind the return of this organization.
Her request in past years for travel money and a graduate assistant had been turned down. According to Cohn, upon his arrival in 2016, former President Greg Gunderson, Ph.D., agreed that without a speech and debate team, students were not developing their critical reasoning skills as much as they could.
“We started with the club and just did debates on campus in the spring, and then in the fall we had a full budget,” Cohn recalls.
In the four years the team has been active again, this is the first year they have had a graduate assistant.
The position is filled by communication and leadership graduate student Janine Wilkins. She has many duties including high school recruitment, managing the team’s Instagram account, supplying materials to members and providing one-on-one coaching to assist and improve the members’ performance. This is not Wilkins’ first experience with speech and debate.
When she was in high school in Advanced Placement English, she had the opportunity to participate in a speech contest. After winning, a teacher invited Wilkins to deliver her speech at the American Legion Oratorical Contest. Wilkins recalled the other entries blew hers out of the water, but she was not discouraged in any way. In fact, she enjoyed the experience.
She ended up attending St. John’s University on a debate scholarship. Since then, she has coached speech and debate at the elementary and high school levels for 13 years, including her son, Adam Wilkins, who is a first-year member on Park’s team.
There are seven active members that make up the team. The group is considered a comprehensive team, meaning they compete in debate and individual speech events. They participate in nine to 10 tournaments a semester: some virtual and some in-person requiring travel.
Cohn notes the virtual format allows the team to do more International Public Debate Association or IPDA tournaments. These debates focus less on reading a lot of evidentiary pieces and talking fast and more on critical thinking.
“Our students, and I think a lot of young people today, don’t have the kind of time to put into the research of some other forms of debate. And so, this is a good compromise,” says Cohn.
She wants students to understand that speech and debate is for anyone and everyone. Cohn believes that although
most think public speaking is not their strength, it often is and they just do not know it yet.
“That’s the thing I think is special about the team. You get to explore things that you normally wouldn’t and try new things out. Everything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, is my philosophy,” says Cohn.
Senior business administration major and third-year member of the team Michael Willis strongly agrees with that philosophy. He participated in speech and debate in high school and said he wants to continue to force himself to be uncomfortable.
“Honestly, I have a sort of special fear for public speaking, but I still think it’s an important enough skill to improve and to get good at,” says Willis. “The benefit is improvement, it’s knowledge, it’s an improvement of one’s personal skills. Public speaking is not something you can avoid in this day and age,” he notes.
Throughout his time on the team, Willis has learned how to present himself. Even more important to him, he learned how to express his ideas and think about them critically. This encompasses finding faults in his own arguments as well as others. In the end, Willis believes this shapes him into a more educated and well-rounded individual.
Like Willis, sophomore nursing major and first year member Adam Wilkins has realized speech and debate provides people with the ability to look at multiple perspectives and truly put themselves in someone else’s shoes. He is very thankful that Park has brought back the Speech and Debate team.
“Just having a team means this is a school that values public speaking, reading, writing and skills that are really necessary for really any career you go into,” he says.
Cohn’s goal for anyone involved in speech and debate is constant improvement. She wants students to develop their skills to the level that she knows they can. This includes improving critical thinking as well as becoming more articulate with ideas when they communicate.
Cohn encourages all students to join the team, even those who may not have the time to travel to tournaments but would like to practice and improve their skills. It is not required for members to compete.
Park Speech and Debate meets on Thursdays at 1:30 p.m. in Copley-Thaw 300. Anyone is welcome to join these meetings. For more information, email Lora Cohn at lora.cohn@park.edu.
PHOTO/Yi Li The members of the Speech and Debate team pose for a group photo.
November 12, 2021 Park Pirate finds balance between sports and academics
Skyler Jensen Editor-in-Chief
“My older sister is the one who made me want to start playing volleyball,” said Natalya Nalivaiko, senior multimedia journalism and public relations major.
The two sisters would go out and play their sport together in the driveway or street during nice weather. Her older sister played for her high school’s varsity volleyball team while Nalivaiko was just starting out.
Nalivaiko enjoyed the basics her sister taught her and tried to learn all she could. Being 10 years younger than her sister, Nalivaiko knew she could learn a lot from her.
Now, at 21, Nalivaiko puts those lessons to use for the women’s beach volleyball team at Park University. While doing that, she also focuses on school and maintains a high GPA. On top of that, she also works as a recreation assistant at the Sandbox, a bar and grill with sand volleyball and pickleball courts. However, all of these responsibilities can be a lot to juggle for a college student.
Nalivaiko has always aimed for greatness. She grew up loving school.
“I was always really excited to go back to school,” said Nalivaiko.
She said enjoyed the structure, organization and was always looking forward to learning something new.
She worked hard and always did well in school, growing up. She continued this passion throughout her college years saying, “I will always put my best effort into it.”
It wasn’t just school where Nalivaiko fought to succeed; she also had to put her best effort into volleyball.
She started playing in a rec league at 8 years old. As she played more, she discovered that volleyball meant more to her than just a connection with her sister. Nalivaiko said, “I just really started to love it as I played it more.”
She played for her school throughout middle school and high school. She also played club during her school’s off-season. She enjoyed building relationships with the girls on her team and feeling a part of something while playing the sport she loved, so she decided to work toward playing in college.
She looked at multiple schools, but none seemed to fit. After hearing that a girl from her school had signed to play for Park, she began looking at the school as an option for her future. She liked the program, and they were willing to
give her an athletic scholarship, so she decided to become a Park Pirate volleyball player.
Nalivaiko was very excited to begin her Park academic and athletic career on a new team. She started out on the reserve team for volleyball, and they won most of their games. She enjoyed the team and wanted to see herself improve.
“I was really excited to move up and to reach my goals,” said Nalivaiko.
One goal that she reached was in 2019, when she was named to the AMC Academic All-Conference for indoor volleyball. She also decided to switch to primarily be a beach volleyball player to reach more of her goals.
Volleyball wasn’t the only decision Nalivaiko had to make. She also had to decide on a major.
She knew that she enjoyed writing and wanted to find a major that used those talents. After taking her liberal education classes during freshman year, she decided to specialize in multimedia journalism and public relations.
This has been a challenging major for her, but she has also found it to be rewarding and enjoyable.
“I get to talk to new people and learn more about them or things that I didn’t know before,” she said.
It’s especially interesting to her to learn about why people do or think specific things. She likes finding these small details that people might not care about and giving them a purpose in her stories.
While finding her way in school, she also continues to focus on volleyball. However, doing both well at the same time has been a struggle for Nalivaiko. She said that it’s challenging to find energy for both aspects of her life. She sometimes feels like she lacks enthusiasm for the sport that she used to love. Nevertheless, she still works hard to succeed in all aspects of her life.
She said, “I try to stay as positive as possible and believe that favor will return to me later on.”
She said that she tries to be a good person while balancing both aspects so that she will have good karma as she works to achieve her goals.
Nalivaiko will graduate in May 2021 from Park University and will have played volleyball all four years of college. She plans to go into public relations where she will have to use the lessons that she learned balancing school with athletics.
She knows that she would have never learned these lessons if her sister hadn’t inspired her to start volleyball all those years ago.
Natalya Nalivaiko, senior
PHOTO COURTESY/Tyler Price Natalya Nalivaiko poses for a team photo in fall 2020.
November 12, 2021
Park alumnus successfully opens local business, plans for more
Savanna Wyatt Editor
“There’s not very, if any, other business owners within my family or going back in my family,” said Quincy Crutchfield about owning a restaurant. “So, it was big to me to be able to do that and to be able to say that I did that.”
Crutchfield, 41, is now co-owner of the brand and a partner for Wingman Kitchen and Sweet Combforts in Kansas City. Even though the restaurant opened in 2020, Crutchfield helped develop its foundation and cultivation years before that.
As a child, Crutchfield enjoyed the arts such as drawing and sketching. He would buy comic books and redraw the images to hone his sketching skills. He also competitively played basketball growing up. These two passions led him to finding purpose at Park.
Born and raised in Tullahoma, Tennessee, he lived there until he came to Missouri to complete his junior and senior years at Park. He studied communication, but also participated in other extracurriculars outside of his coursework.
Crutchfield was a forward on Park’s basketball team well before Park was a member of the Heart of America Athletic Conference. He was coached by Claude English and cited him as a contributor to his development.
“Coach English played a big part in just my development into manhood,” said Crutchfield. “He really taught me and re-instilled my work ethic.”
He was able to carry these lessons and values after he graduated from Park in May 2003 with a degree in communication arts.
Post-graduation, he worked as a manager of Minsky’s Pizza in City Market for a few years before obtaining his master’s in organizational leadership and human relations in 2006. In 2010, he began working with his business partner who would eventually help him open the restaurants.
Crutchfield worked as a freelance graphic designer and worked with The Azdef Group, an entertainment company, planning events. This company is run by Rayan Azad, who graduated from Park in 2004 and is Crutchfield’s partner for Wingman Kitchen and Sweet Combforts.
They both worked together to plan events and help with promotion before deciding to help smaller, cosmopolitan brands grow through marketing and franchising. Then, they stumbled upon two locations of Wingman Kitchen and Sweet Combforts in California.
Crutchfield and Azad met with the owners to discuss franchising the restaurants and growing the business. They then signed a deal to own 50 percent of both companies and decided to open their own location in Westport.
The Westport location officially opened in February 2020, just before the pandemic shutdown began. Initially, there was a learning curve in operating the restaurant due to the pandemic, but they quickly figured out how to manage.
Luckily, food delivery services like Uber Eats and Door Dash helped to promote and increase their business.
They were also one of the only restaurants to remain open during the shutdown, which allowed them to sell their food to customers.
At Wingman Kitchen, they sell Asian-inspired fried chicken wings and sandwiches along with sides like waffle fries. Sweet Combforts sells honeycomb dessert waffles and milkshakes. Crutchfield does not work in the restaurants anymore as he now has more behindthe-scenes role.
Crutchfield’s role in the restaurants now includes prepping for a new location of Wingman Kitchen and Sweet Combforts that will open on Dec. 1 in Overland Park. Working on the marketing, training employees and re-branding for the new location has been his primary focus.
Being a restaurateur is something Crutchfield had always thought about, even with his friends back in Tennessee. They often discussed owning a bar or restaurant. Now, that dream is a reality for him.
Crutchfield and Azad’s next goal is to eventually open other franchises in other states. Specifically, they want to open 10 new locations by the end of 2022. Crutchfield also has other goals for other business ventures.
Crutchfield co-hosted his KC Night Market event at the Crossroads Hotel in September. It was an event showcasing local Kansas City vendors along with music and special cocktails. He will co-host this same event, KC Night Market “Version 2,” on Dec. 2 at the Crossroads Hotel.
He also owns a creative design and consulting company called Crtchfld that involves his passion for being creative. He assists companies and individuals with marketing, branding, graphic design and more.
Crutchfield is always thinking about possible business ventures and ideas but is deciding on which ones to materialize. Venturing into the non-profit world is something he would love to do, so, that is one of his next ideas.
“I want to be able to get into more like philanthropy and giving back and creating programs to help especially youth,” he said. “Just be a resource for them to be able to begin whatever their dreams are.”
Crutchfield resides in Kansas City, a place that he loves. He relishes seeing new movies along with being artistic and spending time with friends.
Visit Wingman Kitchen and Sweet Combforts Tuesday through Sunday at 4117 Pennsylvania Avenue in Westport.
Check out their websites www.1800hotlinewing.com and www.sweetcombfortskc.com.
PHOTO COURTESY/Jae Oates
