04/02/2026
Celebrating Historic Success from Sacramento State’s Hornet Forensics TOPSS Team
We are thrilled to share an extraordinary accomplishment from our Hornet Forensics Team, specifically the students participating through the Transforming Outcomes Project Sacramento State (TOPSS) program at Mule Creek State Prison.
This semester, these students competed in the Asynchronous Speech Championship (ASC), a national invitational tournament and the culminating event of the speech competition season.
Their participation alone marks a historic milestone:
✨ This is the first time in the history of collegiate forensics that a team of incarcerated students has competed at a national ASC tournament.
And they didn’t just show up, they excelled.
Among:
- 49 schools across the country
- 291 competitors
- 789 speeches submitted
- And a highly competitive field where divisions were collapsed (meaning novices competed directly against seasoned champions)
Sacramento State placed 27th in the national Team Sweepstakes, ahead of several long-established programs.
Even more impressively:
🏅 Two TOPSS students were selected to the National Novice Team, an honor granted to only 14 students nationwide.
Only three schools in the entire tournament had more than one student recognized, and Sacramento State was one of them.
Behind this achievement is the remarkable leadership of Dr. Christine Miller, whose dedication to inclusive, transformative education continues to open doors that once seemed unimaginable.
To our TOPSS students:
Your resilience, discipline, and brilliance have lifted the Hornet community. You remind us what access to education makes possible, and you demonstrate the transformative power of communication, creativity, and human potential.
Stingers Up! 🐝
